Tennessee Turnabout
by Sith Droideka
Summary: Watson Justice travels back in time to prevent the events of July 2053.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Welcome to Tennessee Turnabout, the followup to Subterranean Turnabout way back in JvK-G:AA. This is OC heavy to the point of actually only having one appearance of a canon character (for a short scene at the end of the fic, natch). However, it's very important for the Janaverse series... which, by the way, if you haven't read yet, head to our profile and do so. Basically none of this will make sense if you don't, and you WILL be spoiled.**

 **Please enjoy.**

* * *

 _May 14 (2054), 3:00 PM, Detention Center_

"…but sometimes I wish things could be different," Tuck said.

"Yeah," Watson said, looking at her hands, balled into fists on her knees, instead of him. "That'd be nice."

She glanced up at him. Tuck Alechi, 22, a former geologist, sat across from her; she'd met him almost a year ago, during one of Jana (one of her co-workers at Wright Anything Agency)'s earliest cases. He'd been arrested and convicted for blackmail, extortion, suborning perjury, obstruction of justice, and second-degree murder, all as revenge for an older sister who had committed suicide ten years ago.

Watson Justice wasn't in love with him but still she kept visiting him every week. They talked a lot, although at this point Tuck didn't have much to talk about and Watson had too much she couldn't say.

"Yup," Tuck said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair, his face pointed towards the ceiling, "it would be nice. But y'know - a done bun can't be undone. I can't undo my crimes, your parents can't undo the way they raised you, and Onyx… ain't ever coming back from the dead."

"What was she like?" Watson said. She'd asked this so many times, and every time he answered, with a smile.

"She was the greatest sister in the Smokies," Tuck said with relish, "she was only thirteen when our parents died in that fire, nine years older than me, and since that she raised me. It was a hard life but we were happy then, I think. We had each other. She did everything for me and my sake…"

This was the part of the story where his mood always dropped. "…including some things that weren't so savory. Like oooooolll' _Pete_ ," he said with a bitter, sarcastic drawl, "treated us real nice unless he felt like yanking Onyx's chain. Took us in and threatened to turn us back out since we were just dirty little woods kids, grown up all wild, and Onyx said she'd marry him…" He trailed off.

"And then he said you had to go, since he could only support one of you," Watson finished, "and you found her hanging in the barn the next morning."

Tuck scoffed hollowly. "I never understood," he said, "never understood like she didn't just take me and leave like we did with so many other people she'd gotten involved with. She really thought he loved her. She really thought he'd take care of me for life."

"But he didn't," Watson said.

"He didn't," Tuck echoed. "And that's why I had him killed."

Watson looked away. She'd spent enough time tracing the patterns of history, of the world, to know that in the end everything came down to revenge and spite. Humans, she knew, were reactionary creatures who had always been and will always be locked into their fate of striking back against past wrongs, and that was why the future never changed - because it all was the same in the end, wasn't it, past, present, future, all of them nothing more than people hurting each other in turn. It couldn't be helped.

But sometimes she wished things could be different.

"I have to go, Tuck," she said quietly, checking the time on her phone then putting it back in her labcoat pocket. "I'll see you next week."

"Yeah," Tuck said, with a sad smile, "next week. I'll be looking forward to it."

Watson left the detention center and stood in the parking lot, blinking in the late afternoon sun. Although her day job was a defense attorney, albeit one who usually found excuses to hand any new cases off to her father, she was first and foremost a scientist. And not one like her mother, either, a mere detective who was infatuated with forensics, no - Watson was the world's premier temporal physicist.

Or at least she would be if anyone actually knew about what she'd done.

But she kept her time travel a secret for one very simple reason: because she had seen, many times, in her direct future that no one knew about it. Time itself had already dictated that Watson conduct her research and experiments in utmost secrecy, and later when she got the time doors working, that she only tell those whom she had seen in the future as being time-travelers.

To put it simply, Watson felt she could not fight against the pull of fate and would in fact do _anything_ to carry out a future she felt was already set in stone. She didn't even have the full story yet - just trickles reaching her of the mysterious Tula Group and its founder, Omega Watson, or ωatson as she'd sometimes seen it written. She assumed that it was a different version of herself, hailing from the alpha omega timeline - which she knew next to nothing about - but somehow, she wasn't quite sure.

"Is that _doubt_ I smell, Watson?"

Watson took a deep breath. "Misty," she said, but the Misty Wright she was talking to wasn't the same cheerful Misty Wright, Phoenix's oldest biological daughter, that she often saw at WAA. Or rather, she _was_ , but she was from three years in the future, worked for the Tula Group, rarely if ever smiled, and hated Watson with a deep, burning resentment that Watson didn't know what she had done or will do to deserve it.

"You want to go back," Misty-2057 said flatly, "and save Mr. Alechi from his own crimes before he ever commits them. You want to go back and prevent his sister's suicide."

"Is that so bad?" Watson said, still squinting up at the sun. "I only ever do things because they've already been done - because I need to carry the time loop to its completion. Is it so bad that, just once, I want to use my power for good? For what _I_ want?"

"No," Misty-2057 said, and there was a trace of something… ineffable in her voice, some emotion that Watson didn't understand, "I can't fault you for that."

"…but I can," Watson said, her tone of voice cooling, walking towards her bike. She pulled out a bag of vanilla Snackoos and absent-mindedly ate a few. "As Tuck put it: a done bun can't be undone. Mr. and Mrs. Alechi died on June 22nd, 2036; Onyx Alechi died on August 9th, 2044; Tuck Alechi forced Maren Go to murder Peter Salt on July 27th, 2053. That's that. That's how it's meant to be. If I tried to change it, it'd just be another alternate timeline that doesn't mean anything at all."

Out of the corner of her eye, Watson saw Misty-2057's frown deepen.

"What?"

"I just think," Misty-2057 said slowly, "that even if all you can do is ensure that there's a timeline out there where everything worked out for the Alechis… you might as well do it."

"Waste of time," Watson said dismissively.

"Watson, when you can _travel through it_ , you've quite literally got all the time in the world."

"Hm."

She left the detention center parking lot without saying goodbye to Misty-2057, heading back towards her apartment even though WAA wasn't closed for the day yet. _A timeline where everything worked out for the Alechis_ , she thought, frowning, _ridiculous… even if it took the intervention of a time-traveler to save their parents' lives, or at least make sure Onyx didn't kill herself, if it had_ happened _then the Kurain Caverns case would never have come to pass._

The true path of the universe was clear here. But, as she pulled up to the Houzuki Discount Apartment Complex and chained her bicycle to the bike rack, it… was still bothering her. Eating away at some part of her.

She wasn't in love with Tuck Alechi, but she at least liked him enough to want to ensure that somewhere, somehow, there existed a world in which some version of him was happy.

Plus, he'd always said that Onyx would have liked her. Maybe Watson was just curious about what kind of person Onyx Alechi really was while she was alive…

* * *

 _May 14, 11:45 PM, Houzuki Discount Apartment Complex, Room No. 2812_

Watson couldn't sleep. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much microwaved milk she drank or how long she stared at her ceiling, she couldn't sleep. She threw her covers off, rolling out of bed, giving up on sleep entirely… for most people the next step would be watching TV until morning, but she didn't even own one.

She spared a glance at the papers and binders blanketing every surface and wall of her room, then stepped out. It seemed ridiculous, heretical even, to go back to trying to puzzle out and piece together all the information and conspiracies when what was keeping her up was in fact the idea of going back to 2044 Tennessee. There wasn't anything for her to _do_ there.

Of course, she reasoned as she stepped out into the open-air hallway just outside her front door, maybe there was. Maybe it _meant_ something that the one who had suggested this idea - no, more like dared to speak what Watson was already thinking out loud - was none other than Misty-2057, who always seemed to be at least three steps ahead of everyone else. It could very well be that Watson going back in time to Tuck's childhood was indeed fulfilling a time loop. But…

But she'd be going back to _change_ something she knew _had_ happened. How could that fulfill a time loop when it was already clear that Watson's hypothetical actions would have no effect in the true timeline?

She looked out over the city, her fingers pale against the railing. It was a warm night, warm as would be expected in California in mid-May, and between some far-off buildings Watson could see lights over the harbor. It occurred to her now that she'd never in her whole life been more than fifty miles away from the sea. _Tennessee is landlocked_ , she thought for some reason.

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* * *

 _August 1 (2044), 1:00 PM, Grundy County, Tennessee_

Onyx Alechi was an attractively freckled blonde with eyes as black as the stone she was named after. She was 21 years old and lived a hard life on the road with her twelve-year-old brother, Tuck, who she'd been working since she was thirteen and newly orphaned to keep him from becoming a ward of the state. Being a ward of the state never ended well when you were a poor white kid from the poorest part of the state, where what few people who still lived here didn't have anything but the forest, the mountains, and a way of life that hadn't changed much in over a hundred years.

Onyx Alechi was intelligent and ambitious and often dismissed by the locals as being little more than a gold-digging tramp because she'd use any means necessary to get a roof over her little brother's head, and that often meant shacking up with older men. These past few years it was Peter Salt and so far he hadn't turned them out yet, and Onyx was thinking that maybe he really did like the two of them, in spite of everything. They'd gotten around to talking about marriage, but Onyx was hesitant. She was still young, and Tuck was even younger, and she didn't want the two of them spending the rest of their lives - or however long it took for the 46-year-old Peter to die - in the dictionary definition of "backwoods".

Onyx Alechi bounded down the road in a beat-up old Chevy pickup truck, Keith Urban blaring out her window and dust and small rocks flying behind her. She stopped with a screech of brakes just short of a ponytailed brunette with a dancer's physique under a pristine white labcoat.

"Hey," Onyx said, leaning out the driver's side window. "What do ya think you're doin', walkin' in the middle of the road like that? You gon' get yourself killed!"

"Sorry," the brunette said, in some kind of West Coast accent, "I didn't realize this was a road."

"Ain't you ever seen a dirt road before? Where ya from, anyhow?"

"Los Angeles."

"Ahh, bless your heart. C'mon, hop in, hon. I'll give ya a ride to wherever it is you're goin' - I ain't headed anywhere in particular right now, just cruisin'."

"Thank you," said the brunette, climbing in the passenger seat and buckling in, something Onyx never did. She wiped the sweat from under her chin, and Onyx's eye was caught by the large, ornate bracelet she wore. "It's so humid…"

"Welcome to the South, sweetcheeks. Better get used to humidity if ya plan to stay for long." She gunned it back into drive. "Real interestin' bracelet ya got."

"Oh, thanks. It was my grandmother's… part of a set of two… my dad has the other one." She seemed distracted.

Onyx watched her out of the corner of her eye. "Where to, honey?"

"I'm looking for the residence of one Peter Salt. Should be around here somewhere…" She jumped half out of her seat when Onyx laughed. "What?"

"Peter Salt! 'Course I can take ya to Peter Salt's place! I live there," she said, "we're fixin' to get hitched come… fall, I think."

" _You_ …?" The brunette goggled at her.

"The name's Onyx Alechi, darlin'," she said, proffering one hand while using the other one to steer, "most unfortunate creature on God's green Earth, if ya ask the good folks of Layne's Cove."

"…Watson Justice," she said, gingerly shaking Onyx's hand. "Where exactly is Layne's Cove?"

"Couple miles ahead of the way we're headed. Can I call you Wat?"

"Sure."

"What sorta business ya got with my fiancé, Wat?"

"It's…" Wat looked out the window, away from Onyx. "…complicated."

Onyx looked her over. Looked like she was about the same age as her, and easy on the eyes, too. "You ain't never met him before, have ya? Not an ex-girlfriend or anything like?"

"No, no," Wat said quickly, looking at Onyx again. "Nothing like that. I just…"

"What're ya doin' all the way out here, then?" Onyx said, "so far away from California… an' out in the woods, on foot, and not even knowin' what's a road or where Layne's Cove is. Wat, you even got someplace to stay the night?"

"…no."

"Well, shoot, Peter done took in _us_ poor wayfarin' strangers - me an' my brother, I mean - so I'm sure he wouldn't mind lettin' ya sleep in the barn."

"I think I'd prefer someplace with air conditioning…" Wat muttered, brushing sweat-slicked strands of hair out of her face. Onyx laughed again, and again Wat seemed startled by it.

"I was kiddin' about the barn. We've had a spare room ever since I started sleepin' in Peter's bed. You're welcome to it, hon."

"…thanks."

* * *

 _August 1, 2:10 PM, Peter Salt's house_

It looked like a farm. That was Watson's first impression - a farm. Except instead of fields of corn or vegetables or whatever it is they grow on farms (Watson had never really been to one), it was mostly plain old grass and trees. Lots of trees. Being what she supposed Onyx would call a 'city slicker', Watson was very much unaccustomed to such greenery… and by God, it was _humid_. And it didn't let up, either. If you'd asked Watson an hour ago if it were possible to drown in _air_ , she would have said no, but she was reconsidering the answer now.

The Salt estate was of indeterminate size due to the forest that surrounded it encroaching on what was probably a lawn (although a much bigger lawn than Watson had ever seen - then again, she'd never lived anywhere with a lawn, and she'd heard properties tended to have more square footage out in rural areas). There was the barn Onyx had mentioned, all the way in the back, with a tin roof - it looked a little run-down. And then there was the sprawling, ill-maintained ranch house that Onyx pulled up in front of, parking behind a gray van and three sedans with out-of-state license plates (one was a rental). A barely-pubescent blond boy shot out of the door before she'd even turned off the truck. Watson couldn't help but wince at the way he ran over the gravel driveway without any shoes or socks on.

"Onyx!" he yelled.

"Tuck!" Onyx yelled back with the same tone of voice, throwing open the driver's side door and hopping out. Watson did the same, although more gingerly.

"Onyx, the- who's _that?_ " the child Tuck said, pointing at Watson.

Onyx swatted his hand down. "Don't you point, Tuck, it's rude. And this is Watson Justice - picked her up on the side of the road. She's from _California_ ," she added sotto voce.

"California?" Tuck said, "whew, lady. Bless your heart." Onyx elbowed him, and he giggled.

 _Yeah_ , Watson thought, _this is definitely him._ She wondered why Onyx elbowed him for saying "Bless your heart," though, especially after she'd already said that same thing herself. It seemed nice.

"I hear they have lots of real cool caves in California, Miss Watson!" Tuck said, pronouncing the 'Miss' with a hard _z_. When he spoke, she could see a noticeable gap between his front teeth that he didn't have as an adult.

"Yeah, there are," Watson said, trying to come across as friendly and cheerful, "I went to one called Kurain Caverns last year." Of course, she'd gone because there had been a murder in it, one that his future self had perpetuated, but still… "And please call me 'Wat'." _Like you used to. Like you will._

"Now, you said ya had some kinda business with Peter, sweetie?" Onyx said.

"She'll have to wait on that! Mr. Peter ain't got time!" Tuck interrupted, pointing back towards the house, "the cave people done just arrived after ya left, for the Wonder Cave thing they doin'!"

Onyx slapped a hand to her forehead. "Consarn it," she exclaimed, "I thought they wasn't comin' 'til tomorrow! Guess you'll have to wait on talkin' to Peter for a bit, Wat."

"It's fine," Watson said quickly. Quite frankly she still hadn't come up with what exactly she was going to say to Salt when she inevitably had to talk to him - maybe it would be better to explain that she'd really come here to meet with Onyx? Of course, if she was going to go down that route, she should have brought it up during the hour she spent with her in the pickup truck…

"But I really should introduce ya to him before he go," Onyx went on, grabbing Watson's hand, "c'mon, hon. Don't be shy now."

Watson was dragged into the house before she even had the chance to protest. She stumbled into the kitchen after Onyx, and saw a litany of familiar faces standing around the table already. She'd met all of these people one way or another the previous July, although they were younger now - a _lot_ younger, actually. Three out of the five people here were literal teenagers.

"Ay, is this ya girl, Pete?" said a 17-year-old Kitty Kitaki. She actually looked about the same as when Watson had previously met her in the future, right down to the ridiculous 'ghetto' fashion sense, although she had a band-aid across the bridge of her nose and more on her fingers. All brightly colored, of course.

Peter Salt, whom Watson had only ever seen as a dead man, glanced dismissively at the two of them. Apart from his hair being wholly black, he too looked largely the same. "Just the blonde one," he muttered.

"Who's the other one?" said Mary Mec, who as a 16-year-old was already heavily tending towards voluptuousness, though she was dressed conservatively and had her hair tied back into a big, poofy ponytail.

"No idea," Salt said, still poring over maps of the cave, "Onyx, we don't need more strays around here. You and your brother are enough."

"She ain't a stray," Onyx said, rolling her eyes and not responding to Salt's implication about her and Tuck, "she ain't even stayin' that long. This is Watson Justice - from Los Angeles? You know her, Peter?"

"No," Salt said tersely. Onyx glanced at Watson, her expression bordering on suspicious, and Watson gave her a helpless look in return.

"W-Watson, huh?" said Sen Ekha - he was also sixteen, and nearly impossible to recognize, since Watson had known him to be a sublimely pretty if chauvinistic, obnoxious, and weak-willed man. As a teenager, he was gawky and malporportioned, his head seemingly too big for his body, with bad skin, closely-cropped hair, a high-pitched voice, and out-of-fashion-even-for-the-forties glasses. "C-Can I call you-"

"No," Watson cut him off. Now Onyx _did_ look suspicious.

Maren Go, who had curlier hair and less lines on her face, laughed. "That's good, Justice," she said, "put Sen in his place before he starts any of that nonsense."

"Ms. G-Go," Ekha stammered, but she cut him off with a glance. Kitaki and Mec both exchanged glances - Watson would have expected them to laugh, honestly, but they didn't. They looked more nervous than anything else.

"Anyway," Onyx said, finally relieving Watson of her stare and rocking on her heels instead, "Peter, darlin', honey, sugar booger, love of my life-"

"What do you want," Salt sighed, finally standing up straight and giving her a level - and not remotely warm or affectionate - look.

"Wat here don't have a place to stay for the night-"

"She can sleep in the barn."

Watson winced. Onyx frowned, and her tone of voice became suddenly forceful, which surprised Watson a little. "I done told her already she can take the guest bedroom 'til she's ready to go back out west. You really gon' deny her hospitality, Peter?"

There was an awkward pause, where the rest of the speleologists - and Watson - didn't really know how to react. Watson heard the door creak behind her, and assumed Tuck was watching from the crack.

Then Salt gave her and Onyx a rather fake smile and said, "No, of course not. She's welcome to the guest bedroom. My team and I will be spending the next week in Wonder Cave, anyway."

"Swell," Onyx said, grabbing Watson's hand again. (Watson was starting to get a little off-put by all that. She'd heard that Southerners tended to be overly affectionate to strangers just as a matter of course - hence the _sweetie hon darlin'_ stuff - but this was getting ridiculous.)

"…aight, anyway," Kitaki said uncomfortably, picking up one of the maps, "where'd Hana get off to? She still on the can?"

 _Hana?_ Watson thought, bemused. The Kurain Caverns case last July had certainly had a Hana, but she was reclusive and only a year older than Watson, which would make her - twelve years old, same as Tuck. That _can't_ be right.

Or maybe it could, Watson realized with widening eyes as Hana Lavatob stepped into the kitchen through another door, drying her hands off on the bottom of her shirt, saying, "Sorry about that, everyone, the food down here just doesn't appear to agree with me. Now, where were w-" She stopped and stared at Watson.

Watson stared back. Lavatob looked different, of course. Her dark skin and slanted blue-black eyes hadn't changed, but where her hair had been in a stylish bob when Watson had met her exactly once, it was now in a very long, straight ponytail. And she wasn't twelve years old.

She looked closer to thirty.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Oh, by the way, everyone. I live in Georgia. Just... just in case that clears anything up here, haha...**

* * *

 _August 1, 2:20 PM, Peter Salt's house_

Onyx looked between Wat and the Polynesian woman who had just stepped into the kitchen. They were staring at each other, a strange expression on both their faces - an expression of someone who would have never expected the other to be there, yet here they were. "So," Onyx said, a little loudly, "y'all two know each other already?"

Wat recovered before the other woman did. "We met once, a year ago. Just in passing."

"…that is correct," the woman said, with a bland smile. "Miss- Justice, I believe it was?" She glanced around the room, then offered her hand to Onyx. "Hana Ka'eleku, geochemist." They shook hands, then the rest of Peter's friends got up to introduce themselves as well.

"Name's Kitty Kitaki, yo! Real G entomologist!"

"Maren Go. Hydrogeologist. This is Sen Ekha, a biologist.

"I-I-I specialize i-in troglo- troglobites…"

"I'm Mary Mec. I'm a biologist, too, but I specialize in trogloxenes."

"That's enough," Peter said, raising his voice over them. "Onyx doesn't need to know who you all are, only that she needs to stay out of our way during preparations."

"It's real nice to meet y'all," Onyx said brightly.

"What did I just say, Onyx?" Peter said.

Onyx rolled her eyes, then grabbed Wat's hand again - by this point she was surprised that Wat shown any discomfort at that - and led her from the kitchen to the hall. "Peter's a cartographer," she explained to her.

"I- I know," Wat said.

"You know him through some cavin' business?" Onyx said.

"Something like that…"

"'Cuz he sure don't seem to know you, Wat. He done said it outright…"

Wat flinched. "It's… a complicated matter."

"And how do ya know that Ka'eleku woman? Same cavin' business?"

"I'm not a caver," Wat mumbled.

They stopped in front of the guest bedroom, and Onyx narrowed her eyes at her. She was definitely hiding something - although so far her gut feeling was that Wat had nothing but good intentions, and if there was one lesson Onyx had learned well, it was the importance of trusting her instincts. "What's your job, anyhow, hon?"

"I'm… a defense attorney, and a scientist."

"What _kind_ a scientist?" Onyx pressed.

Wat's eyes flicked around the hallway, taking in the slightly crooked wallpaper and old photographs of Peter's parents, who had owned this house before he did. "A physicist."

"Physics?" Onyx said, "math and stuff like that? Gettin' airplanes and spaceships to fly?"

Wat laughed, a little nervously. "No, no. Temporal physics. It's-"

"-a purely theoretical field," Onyx finished. "Just scientists playin' the what-if game with each other. What if _time_ was something physical we could mess around with, change directions, and pick apart like a vulture does a possum."

Wat gaped at her. Onyx laughed. "What? Just 'cuz my grammar ain't anythin' like you'd hear in ya law office don't mean I don't know nothin' 'bout any of this academic stuff. We rednecks ain't dumb, just work harder on our cars and in our fields than on schoolin'."

"I-I'm sorry," Wat stammered. "I didn't mean-"

"It's fine, you yankees always make fool assumptions like that anyway. Wouldn't be yankees if ya din't." She slapped her on the back. "Just remember to keep that in mind - if the South were full of know-nothin' idiots, Dixie woulda died with General Lee."

Wat fell into an awkward, uncomfortable silence, and Onyx shrugged and opened the door to the guest bedroom - her old bedroom. "This's home for 'til ya leave, sweetie. It ain't much, but…"

"Bigger than my bedroom back in Los Angeles," Wat said, walking in and looking around, then pressing her hands experimentally into the mattress. "I can't thank you enough, Onyx."

"No problem, they call it Southern hospitality for a reason, dear. I'll get ya some sheets and pillows." She leaned against the doorway. "How long _are_ ya stayin' for, anyway? Guess if Peter's gon' head off with his cave buddies, you'll be a week afore ya get the chance to do yer mysterious business with him."

"Sorry."

Onyx laughed again, and almost laughed more at that expression Wat kept getting every time she did - a kind of dazed look, somewhere between surprise and appreciation. "Wat, you are _more_ than welcome to stay even longer than a week. Don't get me wrong, I love my brother like I love myself, and Peter ain't so bad either - most of the time, anyway - but I was gon' go _crazy_ without havin' another hen around to talk to. There are just some things boys don't _understand_ , y'know?"

Wat blinked at her. "Um," she said, "of course."

"I ain't kidding. Stay as long as ya can get away with. And don't pay Peter no mind if he starts gettin' tired of you, he says the same thing about me an' Tuck all the time but this marryin' business was _his_ idea."

"Marriage," Wat whispered, then continued in a normal volume, "right. I almost forgot about that. You two really are engaged…"

"Yup," Onyx said. "Haven't set the date yet or nothing, but we are."

Wat gave her an odd look. "Onyx, do you love him?"

"…come 'gain?"

"I mean…" she looked away abruptly. "Maybe it's not really my place to ask. I just thought-"

"…that it's some kinda marriage of convenience?" Onyx said. She shook her head. "You ain't the first person to get that impression. Even Tuck thinks of it like that."

"Is he right?"

Onyx smiled, careful not to show her true feelings behind it. "I can answer that later. We have all week… in the meantime, sweetcheeks, you've been sweatin' like a sinner in church all day. Bathroom's just down the hall, the one with the new doorknob. The shower takes a couple minutes to heat up, but we ain't like your state in that down here you don't gotta worry 'bout how much water ya use. The real thin door next to the bathroom is the linen closet, that's where ya can get a towel - if'n ya need any clothes to change into, you can borrow some of mine. Mine an' Peter's room is way down at the end of the hallway, last door. Stop by anytime, darlin'."

"Uh… right. Got it. Thank you."

* * *

 _August 1, 6:00 PM, Peter Salt's house, Kitchen_

"Biscuits an' gravy!" Tuck exclaimed.

" _What?_ " Watson said.

"Sorry, do y'all ain't got this in Los Angeles?" Onyx said, setting a plate in front of Watson. She stared at it. It was less like any gravy she'd ever seen, and more like thick, lumpy gray slop. "Beef gravy, hon, you tear up yer biscuits and mix 'em in, and ya eat it like that."

Watson looked at the other dishes on the table. "And that's…?"

"Collards and fried green tomatoes," Tuck chirped, tearing his biscuit into large pieces. Onyx grabbed it from him. "Hey!"

"We gotta say grace first!" Onyx said. Tuck gave her an exaggeratedly pouty frown, then folded his hands and closed his eyes. Onyx did the same.

Watson awkwardly imitated them. _I'm completely out of my depth here_ , she realized as Onyx said a quick prayer and then half-shouted, "Well, dig in!" The only thing Watson had ever eaten before here was… the cans of Coca-Cola being served as a drink. And she hadn't grown up in a religious household, or indeed ever really been around one, so 'saying grace'? New to her.

"At least _try_ everythin', dearie," Onyx said, sitting across from Watson and rolling her eyes. "Could be worse. We coulda served ya squirrel."

"Sq- you eat squirrels down here?" Watson said, aghast.

"They easy to shoot," Onyx shrugged.

"What do ya eat in California?" Tuck asked.

"Uh… Japanese food is popular…"

"Like sushi and stuff? Ain't that raw fish with rice an' seaweed?" Tuck practically inhaled a big spoonful of his gravy-biscuit mix. "An' you think we're _weird_ for eatin' _squirrel?_ "

"Tuck," Onyx said reproachfully, then looked at Watson again. "Alright, Wat, darlin', not ta change the subject or nothin', but - I know Peter and his cave folk have already left for the week, but you do gotta clear up at least a little of this for us - _how_ exactly do ya know them?"

"It's- it's complicated, as I said earlier," Watson said, staring down into her gravy. No wonder the South had a higher average obesity rate than the rest of the nation… not that either of the Alechis were overweight at all… "It'd be better to say that I know _of_ them, actually. It's only Hana L- Ka'eleku that I've met personally."

Onyx raised an eyebrow. "You was lookin' at all of 'em like ya knew 'em on sight."

"…" She hadn't expected Onyx to be so observant; this could prove problematic… Then something occurred to Watson, and she seized upon it. "Kitty Kitaki," she blurted out, "the entomologist. Our fathers knew each other."

Tuck blinked. "The one with the yellow an' ginger stripes in her hair? She from California?"

"Come ta think of it, she _did_ have the same West Coast accent that you have, Wat," Onyx said, "I just din't notice it 'cuz she was talkin' like some kinda jive turkey."

Watson relaxed. "Yeah," she said lightly, "she usually talks like that." She gingerly took a taste of the beef glop, and found it… of a heavier and coarser flavor than what she was used to, but still rather tasty. It helped that a lifetime of Eldoon's had given her a liking for sodium, and the buttery softness of the biscuits offset it nicely. "Actually, my dad was a defense attorney before me. One of his first clients was Kitaki's father. He was accused of murder, but it was actually his fiancée who did it." She paused, trying to remember how the rest of the case went. "I think, actually, his fiancée was Kitaki's mother, and there was this minor scandal back then about the treatment of pregnant women in the ladies' prison, because Kitaki wasn't actually born until a couple months after the case."

"Wow," Tuck said, "so she was born inside a jail? Like that guy from that ol' musical about French people?"

"I guess."

"Interestin'," Onyx said. "What about the others - Mary, Maren, an' Sen?"

"Never seen them before in my life," Watson lied. Onyx looked like she didn't quite believe her.

"You really should tell me your business with Peter," she said.

"Aw, does it matter?" Tuck said.

"While she's stayin' under our roof? 'Course it matters," Onyx said, "'sides, if Peter and I are to be married - his business is _my_ business, ain't it?"

"Not that your business is _his_ business," Tuck said under his breath. Onyx shot him a glare.

"…I guess you have a point," Watson said, finding the greens to be not much to her liking, "but I'm not sure if I want to go into too much detail… at least not at the dinner table."

"Can ya at least tell me if it's got more to do with you bein' a lawyer, or you bein' a temporal physicist?"

Watson decided it'd be easiest to keep her story straight if she kept it vague and as close to the truth as possible. "I came to know of him through a case I was working on in my job as a defense attorney - a colleague of mine was defending a colleague of his about a year ago - but I came here due to something related to my job as a scientist. A…" she paused to think, "a suggestion from a peer."

"I see," Onyx said, with an expression that plainly read _I'll be asking you more about this later_.

"…now hang on," Tuck said, looking between Onyx and Watson, "what's this tempura physics stuff, anyway?"

" _Temporal_ physics," Watson corrected. She spent the rest of the meal giving a careful overview of the field to Tuck - remembering as she did, with a trace of amusement, the way he'd already known what the field was back during the Kurain Caverns case, despite it being so different from his own (geology). Onyx occasionally chimed in to rephrase what Watson was saying into simpler terms for her brother, who struggled more with the vocabulary than the concepts. Watson kept in mind what Onyx had said earlier about not being surprised that she was smart, despite how- how _country_ she was, but… well, it wasn't exactly an _unpleasant_ surprise…

They finished off the meal with a blackberry cobbler that Tuck had excitedly told Watson he had picked the blackberries from wild bushes that morning. They tasted better than the ones Watson got at the grocery store, when she could afford to splurge.

* * *

 _August 2, 6:48 AM, Peter Salt's house_

It was hot and humid and the overhead fan wasn't doing enough and even though she had the window open, all that really did was demonstrate to Watson that bug screens were a good idea on the West Coast, but an absolute _necessity_ in the South. At the crack of dawn, she got up because she wasn't sleeping very well anyway, and stepped outside. There was so much dew that for a second she thought it had rained overnight, but then remembered that she would have heard it. There'd been nothing but heat lightning, soundless, lighting up the clouds, perfectly dry.

Onyx surprised her again by already being out there.

"Hey," she said.

"Morning," Watson said, awkwardly tugging on the hem of her borrowed shirt. It was worn and slightly too small - Onyx was just a little shorter than her, and just as lean, although her musculature was more pronounced.

Probably because of things like the bag of… something… she was carrying. "Sleep well? Ya look like you didn't."

Watson shook her head. "I don't need a lot of sleep to function."

"Mind helpin' a gal out with her chores? Them chickens ain't gonna feed themselves."

"Sure."

The chicken hut was behind the barn, and it smelled absolutely foul. Onyx laughed at Watson's face when they approached it - "I know ya probably ain't never seen a chicken that wasn't already dead an' plucked, hon, but did ya really think they'd smell like roses?" - but Watson quickly got used to it and helped distribute the chicken feed.

"Don't give 'em too much now, they're stupid little creatures an' they don't know when to stop," Onyx warned.

"Hey, Onyx," Watson said abruptly after a minute or two, "yesterday I asked you if you really love Peter Salt."

"Yeah?" Onyx said, "why's it matter ta you?"

"…" She blew out a long breath through her nose, watching the chickens pick. "Maybe that's the wrong question. I guess it doesn't matter if you love him or not - and it's none of my business. Love has nothing to do with marriage, right? It's why my father failed two of them in a row."

Onyx raised her eyebrows at her. "What are ya tryin' to say, Wat?"

"Do you think _he_ loves _you?_ Do you think he loves your brother?"

"Huh?"

"If he were to tell you that- that he could only take care of one of the two of you, what would you do? Would you really… _leave_ , in the hopes that Tuck could have a stable life with him, even with you out of the picture?"

There was a long pause while Onyx stared at Watson, and then she slowly closed up the bag of feed and picked it up again. "Odd question," she said.

"Just… just answer it, Onyx. Please. I have to know."

"Hmm… Wat, if I tell ya what I'd do in that situation, then in return will you tell me why you'd even _ask_ such a thing in the first place?"

"Yes," Watson said reluctantly, "before I go."

"…"

Onyx gave her a brilliant grin, her white teeth contrasting with her squinting black eyes. "Alright, darlin'. It's not a hard question anyway. If Peter went an' told me he couldn't take care of both of us, yeah, you'd better believe I'd leave - and I'd be takin' Tuck with me. There ain't no way I'd _ever_ leave Tuck behind. Not Peter, not the road, not the government, not even death can take him from me."

* * *

 **Ka'eleku Cave is the actual name of the Hana Lava Tube.**


	3. Chapter 3

_August 8, 3:30 PM, Grundy County_

For the past week, Watson had settled into life with the Alechis, much easier than she would have expected. She eventually got used to the humidity, and mostly got used to the food (she found herself with a liking for grits, of all things), and while the chores around the property - feeding chickens, weeding, cutting back kudzu, cleaning and fixing things - taxed her greatly, she was glad to help out. The pace of life here was very different from the pace of life she was used to, slower but more physical, so even though she was usually left exhausted, she also was… relaxed, at ease. She was sleeping better than she'd ever had, as long as she remembered - every night since she came, she was knocked out as soon as her head hit the pillow, and she felt refreshed when she woke up at the crack of dawn every morning to meet Onyx in the yard.

The other nice thing about the chores was that she managed to avoid the subject of why she'd come to Layne's Cove in the first place. Tuck didn't seem to question her presence, and Onyx… well, she evidently decided that since Watson had already agreed to tell her eventually, there was no need to press her on it. So as far as those two were concerned, Watson still was nothing more than a mysterious stranger who had suddenly showed up, and had no backstory they knew or needed to know.

The cost of that was that, despite spending the more idle hours with Onyx, she still hadn't made any progress on an interpersonal front. And that meant she still didn't know what was going on with her. That meant she still didn't know why she had said - with all apparent sincerity - that she'd never leave Tuck behind… and the date of her suicide was rapidly approaching. Watson would often think, _But of course that means it wasn't suicide, it was murder after all, and Tuck never found out after ten years_ , but she had a hard time really believing that Onyx - that _anyone_ \- could be murdered and have it pass for a suicide for an entire decade. Even out here in the sticks, it seemed impossible.

The speleologist group returned sans one member.

"Where'd that Ka'eleku gal get off to?" Onyx demanded, hands on her hips, standing in front of the van they'd just arrived in. None of the scientists were making eye contact with her.

Eventually, Salt spoke. "It's none of your concern, Onyx." He turned around and started directing the unpacking of their equipment. No one said anything more than what they needed for their work - even the normally talkative Kitty Kitaki was silent. Grim, even. Watson thought she looked pale.

"Do you think something happened?" Watson said in an undertone to Onyx.

Onyx nodded. "It's obvious, ain't it…?"

"Will you try to find out later? After the others have left, I mean."

"Why don't you ask yourself, hon? You came here to talk to him in th' first place."

"Oh, right."

Watson had completely forgotten to come up with a legitimate excuse to talk to Salt. She considered discussing a rumor that he'd murdered a younger girl and disguised it as a suicide - or intentionally drove a younger girl to suicide - or something, just to see how he'd react… but that seemed too potentially confrontational, and that could mean Salt kicking her out for good, which would mean losing her chance to prevent Onyx's death in the first place, which would defeat the point of this whole excursion.

So instead she went after Ekha, when he was briefly separated from the rest of the group. Even though she was supposed to be semi-acquainted with Kitaki already, she figured it would be a good idea to not draw too much attention to herself there, lest she realize that there was no earthly reason why Apollo Justice's daughter should be older than she. And besides, summer '53, Ekha had been easy to get to talk. Mostly by showing off her legs. She was wearing jean-shorts now, but figured the cutoff Volunteers t-shirt would make up for it.

"Where'd Ka'eleku go?" she asked him.

He started, nearly dropping the box of tools he was carrying. "U-Uh, um, I…"

"She can't have left already. Her car's still here."

"She… w-walked?"

Go suddenly appeared out of nowhere, placing a hand on Ekha's shoulder. He started even more badly than he had when Watson had confronted him.

"Why does it matter to you?" she asked Watson, her eyes inscrutable behind her glasses.

"Well, I… I knew her."

"You said you'd met once."

"I-In passing," Ekha added.

Watson frowned. "Fine then. I think it's _strange_ that she's suddenly gone. Did something happen?"

Go didn't say anything, but after half a moment Ekha blurted out, "she's dead."

"Sen!" Go snapped, her hand on his shoulder tightening. He whimpered. Watson raised her eyebrows.

"Dead?!"

"She fell into the underground river," Go said dismissively, "and was swept away by the current. Recovering her body's going to be impossible. We figured that it'd be best to have her family informed of what happened before we went around telling anyone. Isn't that right, Sen?"

"R-R-Right."

"…" _No, that can't be right_ , was the only thing Watson could think. Lavatob - Hana Lavatob, dead in the past - that meant that the other members of the speleologist group should _remember_ her. Did they somehow all _miss_ the fact that Hana Lavatob was a younger version of Hana Ka'eleku?

Had she stumbled into an alternate timeline?

"I'm- sorry to hear that," she said quickly, "I have to go." Before Ekha or Go could respond, she ran back to the house and made a beeline for her- for the guest bedroom, passing a confused Tuck in the hallway. She grabbed the time-travel device, and…

"Oh, yeah," she said out loud. _I came here to_ make _this an alternate timeline_.

Watson ran a hand over her face tiredly. She spent so much in her present trying to ensure that her life didn't become just a hollow echo of the alpha Watson's - the true Watson, the _real_ Watson - life, she must have developed a visceral panic response to the prospect of spending any significant amount of time in any of the non-alpha timelines. But in this case, to still be in the alpha timeline - _that_ would be failure.

She smiled wanly down at the time-travel device in her hands. As callous as it was to say, Lavatob's death was a good sign, because it guaranteed that somehow, in some way, the course of time had changed here - and perhaps that was why Onyx had said she'd never kill herself…?

(Watson would have liked to think that Lavatob's death didn't matter at all because it wasn't the real Lavatob, but admitting that would mean admitting that her quest to prevent Onyx's suicide was pointless, since this wasn't the real Onyx. She buried that thought somewhere in the back of her mind.)

 _So…_ , Watson thought, _I can go home now_. The notion brought no comfort or relief, and in fact she felt a bit of a pang in her chest about it. She didn't know why. Maybe she'd just miss this place, and the Alechis especially. But this _was_ an alternate timeline now, and - it wasn't like they were going to remember her after she left anyway, so… she hit the on-switch.

No point in saying goodbye.

The screen flickered to life and immediately Watson felt like she'd been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer.

L N α α

Watson blinked hard, but the four characters remained glowing under CURRENT LOCATION (UTC). She was still in the alpha alpha timeline.

"But how?" she said out loud, "Lavatob is-" she cut herself off, glancing nervously at the door and shutting the time-travel device off. She half-expected Onyx to randomly walk in.

 _How?_ she asked herself again, re-stashing the device. _How did 21-year-old Lavatob end up on their team in '53 if 28-year-old Lavatob was already on their team in '44? Did they claim to be relatives somehow…? But then, how could Lavatob corroborate that in '53?_ She _had nothing to do with time travel - I'd know if she did…_

Watson started pacing, biting her lip and wondering just how deep this went. And how this was _possible_ with this still being the alpha timeline. And the fact that if this was still the alpha timeline, then Onyx would die tonight, somehow.

"What's the matter, sweetie?"

Watson jumped. Onyx was leaning against the doorway, hands deep in her overall pockets, watching her curiously.

"Oh, ah, I… um…"

"Didja find out what happened ta Hana?"

"Yeah… an accident in the cave."

Onyx raised her eyebrows.

"She's dead," Watson clarified.

"Ohh," Onyx said, clapping her hands to her mouth, "that's _terrible_. I done told Peter that those new levels was gonna be dangerous…"

"New levels?" Watson said, "what do you mean?"

Onyx blinked. "The course of the river flowin' through the cave suddenly diverted earlier this here summer. Water's been drainin' pretty steady since then, so while Wonder Cave used to be 'bout fifteen miles, I think, it's 'round about fifty now. Since he live in the area and all, Peter decided it'd best be him to chart all that new ground, so he called up a friend of his from college - must be Maren - and…"

"I see," Watson said. The corner of Onyx's mouth twitched in an apologetic smile, and Watson figured there had to be something she wasn't telling her. Something related to the cave, perhaps? …Watson couldn't figure it out, since Onyx hadn't lied to her, bypassing her Perceive ability entirely.

"Have ya talked to Peter yet?"

"…no."

"Figures. He ain't much in the mood for talkin' right now. I guess Hana's death musta shook him."

"Because someone died or because he actually cared for Hana?" Watson said without thinking.

"They was friends, wasn't they?"

"Not much of an answer."

Onyx sighed, closing her eyes. "Wat, I know you don't like Peter none. It's obvious," she added, without opening her eyes, when Watson opened her mouth to protest. "And I know he can be a real snake sometimes. But y'know, there are some people who act like that but have a real good heart, deep down."

"Is Peter Salt one of them?"

Onyx didn't answer.

* * *

 _August 8, 11:30 PM, Peter Salt's house_

Watson heard yelling down the hall. It was indistinct and muffled - she couldn't make out what they were saying but judging by the low pitch of one and high of the other, it was Onyx and Salt. Feeling vaguely sick to her stomach, Watson sat up and walked over to the door, opening it and sticking her head out into the hallway.

She still couldn't make out what they were saying, just that they both sounded angry. The door of the bedroom next to hers was also open, and Tuck's white, freckled face looked out at her from behind it.

"They always do this," he whispered.

"Ah."

"D'ya think they'll stop when they get hitched?" Tuck said.

Watson shook her head. She remembered her parents screaming at each other when she was just a little younger than Tuck, before they separated - now that she thought about it, in fact, it was this very year - 2044 - that her home life had fallen apart. It was strange to think that on the other side of the country, right now, she herself existed just as she was when this was. The dark world of time-travel had yet to drag her under, back then.

The door at the end of the hall opened, and both Watson and Tuck quickly and silently closed their own doors at the same time. Heavy footsteps passed down the hall - had to be Salt. When they were gone, Watson opened the door again. No Salt, no Tuck… no Onyx.

Watson tried to remember everything Tuck had told her about the suicide ten-eleven years in the future. It had happened tonight, in the early hours of the morning. She had hanged herself in the barn. She had left a note.

Salt had told her she had to go.

Watson slipped down the hallway, very careful not to make any noise, and opened the door to Salt and Onyx's bedroom. It was empty. The window was open and the bugscreen was resting against the outside wall of the house. Looking outside, there were footprints in the dewy grass and fireflies lazing about in the air, and nothing more.

"Onyx?" Watson called softly nonetheless. No response, of course. She hadn't been thinking.

Assuming that Onyx had left through the window because Salt was in the front part of the house, Watson climbed out the window and headed for the barn.

* * *

 _August 8, 11:40 PM, The barn_

"Why?" Onyx asked her without turning around.

"Why what?" Wat said.

"Why did you come here?"

Wat didn't say anything. Onyx turned around and sat on a bale of hay, staring at Wat. The light of the full moon filtered through the gaps in the wood siding and tin roof of the barn; she could see Wat just fine, washed-out and colorless in the moonlight. She, Onyx thought, looked paler than she _should_ have under the lighting conditions.

"What do you mean, why did I come here?" Wat said stupidly.

Onyx frowned. "Ain't it a simple question? What are you after?"

"I…"

"Ya said you'd tell me. A week ago. I din't forget."

Wat looked away, deliberately, it seemed. Onyx doubted she'd be getting her answer. _Ah well_ , she thought, looking up at the dusty beams of the rafters. It was relatively silent in here - just frogs and crickets making a racket outside, the background music of life in the South, the nighttime track to complement the day's cicadas.

Onyx spoke at length. "All I really want is for Tuck to live the life he deserves."

"And Peter?" Wat said.

"…Peter…" Onyx smiled weakly. "Don't pay him no mind."

"What did he say to you?" Wat's voice was very dark and low and for the first time since Onyx met her she wondered if she should be afraid.

"…nothing. He didn't say nothing."

"Onyx…"

Onyx stood and walked over to Wat, standing less than six inches in front of her. She looked her directly in the eyes and when Wat tried to look away she grabbed her face.

"Things don't work down here the way they do in your li'l socialist sun an' sand state," Onyx said flatly. "We mind our business."

"But-" Wat started, "I-"

Onyx let go, took a step back. "Whatever you're up to, Wat, just let it be."

Wat blinked at her, and Onyx started pushing her out the barn door, back towards the house.

"But, Onyx-"

"I want ya out of here by noon tomorrow. Go back to Los Angeles, Wat. Go home."

"Onyx, I _can't-_ "

"Let it _be_."

Wat sighed in defeat and let Onyx railroad her back to her room. Then Onyx checked on Tuck - he was asleep - and returned to the barn.

She looked up at the rafters again.

She'd really gotten into it now, hadn't she?

* * *

 _August 9, 6:53 AM, The barn_

Watson yawned. She'd hit a wall with Onyx so she did the only thing she _could_ do: hedge her bets that it had been murder, not suicide, and spend the rest of the night staking out the house. Salt had left after his argument with Onyx - Watson could confirm that, the car was gone and the tire-tracks were recent - so she stayed outside all night, circling the edge of the property, keeping an eye out for footprints just in case Salt had decided to park the car somewhere else as an alibi and then double back on foot to kill Onyx.

But nothing. Salt stayed gone all night and in fact he was still gone now that the sun was coming up. Watson felt a little relieved - Onyx's time of death had already passed, so if it had been Salt who killed her than Watson had surely changed the course of history - or the course of this timeline, anyway - with her prowling.

But she couldn't relax fully, not yet. Not until she saw Onyx alive and ruled out suicide once and for all.

She wasn't in the house, and wasn't in the yard, either. The truck was still gone so she probably hadn't left. Tuck was still asleep. The barn door was slightly ajar, a thin crack of darkness cut down the middle of its front, beckoning Watson to open the doors. _Come see, come see. She's in here_.

Watson rubbed her eyes. Right, it was the one place left. And the place she'd been found hanging in the alpha timeline. But they shouldn't _be_ in the alpha timeline anymore, right? (She hadn't checked her time travel device again. She was… afraid.)

She took a deep breath and flung the barn doors open, letting in a pale wash of morning light. And she saw exactly what she expected to see.

A rope.

A corpse.

Onyx.

Watson stood there, silent and still, not having moved an inch, eyes wide. Right. She expected this. She'd failed to prevent this.

It didn't matter.

Slowly she let her hands drop. In another life she would have freaked out, pulled Onyx down, called an ambulance. But she knew already that she was dead because she'd known, even before she came here she'd known when Onyx was going to die. She'd failed to prevent this because there was no way she _could_ prevent this. She'd failed to ensure than an alternate timeline existed where Onyx didn't die but did it even _matter_ because that Onyx, the surviving Onyx wouldn't be the one she'd spent the past week with, and that Tuck, the Tuck who finished his adolescence with his sole surviving family member, he wasn't the real Tuck either.

It _didn't matter_.

Robotically, she reached a hand in one of Onyx's pockets, not thinking about how the warmth that should have been there simply wasn't. She knew what she'd find in here: the suicide note.

 _Please,_ it said, _take care of Tuck_.

And that was it. Just as she'd been told. No address, but who could it have been addressed to but her fiancé? No signature, but who could have written it but her?

Without thinking, Watson crumpled the note. _Please take care of Tuck_. It wouldn't happen. Salt would turn him out and nine years later Tuck would kill him and manipulate the investigation so that he could turn the trial into a smear campaign - all for revenge. And there was nothing Watson could do about that.

 _Please take care of Tuck_ , was Onyx's last request, her dying wish. Watson couldn't even be sure there was _any_ timeline where this same sad tragedy didn't play out. Maybe the ones where the Alechis didn't exist.

 _Please take care of Tuck._

"I tried," Watson said hoarsely to Onyx's empty, unfeeling face.


	4. Chapter 4

_August 9, 7:00, Peter Salt's house, Guest bedroom_

Onyx's corpse was still hanging from the rafters of the barn. Watson had smoothed out her suicide note and put it back. She tried to remember if Tuck ever mentioned a fingerprint analysis turning up unknown prints, but she couldn't recall him ever talking about it. They _had_ done a fingerprint analysis on the note, hadn't they?

The beat-up Chevy was still absent from the driveway. Wherever Salt was, it wasn't here. Tuck was still asleep in his room. He'd wake up later, go out to do his chores, and find his sister dead. He'd be alone. Watson already knew that.

She picked up the time travel device for the second time in as many days. She switched it on. It was time to go.

She just felt numb.

Watson stared at the coordinates of the last time door she'd opened - the one that had brought her here, a week ago. Her finger hovered over the RETURN TO ANCHOR POINT button. If she hit that, it would take her home: alpha alpha Los Angeles, one minute into May 15th, 2054. But she kept her eyes on the coordinates that brought her _here_ , where - if only for a few moments, spread throughout the week - she'd been able to let down her guard. She'd been… comfortable.

Maybe even happy.

She was suddenly filled with rage, burning, consuming, white hot and painful, and with an anguished, animalistic growl she threw her time travel device across the room. It crashed off the wall and onto the floor with an ugly crunching shatter.

Watson's eyes widened. _Oh, crap_. She shouldn't have done that. She leaped over to it, picking it up and clicking the on/off switch - it flickered back to life, apparently the same outside of a long, thin crack running down the screen. She sighed in relief. If she broke the device, she couldn't guarantee she'd be able to get back to her own time without literally waiting for it to roll around - a risky prospect since she'd have to coexist with her younger self for ten years.

It was time to leave Grundy County.

Sighing, hands shaking, she hit the return button.

* * *

 _Time: ? Date: ? Place: ?_

The humidity hit her lungs like a sledgehammer.

Watson bent over, wheezing, confused by her body's reaction to the moisture in the air. She'd adapted to it over her past week in Tennessee - and furthermore, it shouldn't _be_ this humid. She should be on the coast of California. It was humid there but not _this_ kind of humid - hot there, but not _this_ kind of hot.

Furthermore, she should have returned to the stroke of midnight, when she left. Even allowing for error, it should still be dark out. But it wasn't - with this light, it was probably early afternoon.

And why was she in a forest?

"Oh," she said out loud, realizing what was going on and pulling out her time travel device to check. Yep. CURRENT LOCATION (UTC): 1 AUGUST 2044 CE | LN α α | 13:00, CURRENT LOCATION (WGS86): 35.39° N | 85.72° W. Somehow she managed to send herself back to exactly when and where she'd first arrived. She glanced at the anchor point - it should have said 00:00 | 15 MAY 2054 CE | 34° 3′ 25.2″ N, 118° 14′ 16.8″ W and then a note about whether or not the time door was open or closed.

But the anchor point box was blank. Maybe that was why she'd been sent here. Maybe that was- _Wait._ Watson glanced at where it said LN α α, then looked behind her.

There was no door.

And furthermore, if this was exactly when she had arrived - where was _she?_

It was at that moment she realized that, instead of the clothing she had been wearing when she hit the return button - the same jean shorts and cutoff Volunteers t-shirt she'd tried to show off to Ekha - she was once again wearing her more customary outfit of running shorts and a leotard under a bleach-white labcoat.

Her eyes widened in realization. She hadn't even known this was _possible_ \- to send her consciousness back in time, to her own body as it existed at that point.

She stashed the time device away. This was exactly what Ares was looking for, wasn't it? Part of his final solution to all the little issues in his life… she wouldn't be telling him about this, of course! He'd have to pry it out of her cold dead hands.

And in the meantime, she had another chance.

* * *

 _August 1 (2044), 1:00 PM, Grundy County, Tennessee_

 _Loop Two_

Onyx Alechi was an attractively freckled blonde with eyes as black as the stone she was named after. She was 21 years old and lived a hard life on the road with her eleven-year-old brother, Tuck, who she'd been working since she was thirteen and newly orphaned to keep him from becoming a ward of the state. Being a ward of the state never ended well when you were a poor white kid from the poorest part of the state, where what few people who still lived here didn't have anything but the forest, the mountains, and a way of life that hadn't changed much in over a hundred years.

Onyx Alechi was intelligent and ambitious and often dismissed by the locals as being little more than a gold-digging tramp because she'd use any means necessary to get a roof over her little brother's head, and that often meant shacking up with older men. These past few years it was Peter Salt and so far he hadn't turned them out yet, and Onyx was thinking that maybe he really did like the two of them, in spite of everything. They'd gotten around to talking about marriage, but Onyx was hesitant. She was still young, and Tuck was even younger, and she didn't want the two of them spending the rest of their lives - or however long it took for the 46-year-old Peter to die - in the dictionary definition of "backwoods".

Onyx Alechi bounded down the road in a beat-up old Chevy pickup truck, Keith Urban blaring out her window and dust and small rocks flying behind her. She stopped with a screech of brakes just short of a ponytailed brunette with a dancer's physique under a pristine white labcoat.

"Hey," Onyx said, leaning out the driver's side window. "What do ya think you're doin', walkin' in the middle of the road like that? You gon' get yourself killed!"

"I'm sorry," said the brunette, in some kind of West Coast accent.

Onyx blinked. She was getting the _strangest_ sense of déjà vu right now. Maybe she'd met this woman somewhere before? "Where ya from?"

"Los Angeles."

Okay, so no. Onyx had never left Middle Tennessee in her life. "Ahh, bless your heart. C'mon, hop in, hon. I'll give ya a ride to wherever it is you're goin' - I ain't headed anywhere in particular right now, just cruisin'."

"Thank you," said the brunette, climbing in the passenger seat and buckling in, something Onyx never did. She wiped the sweat from under her chin, and Onyx's eye was caught by the large, ornate bracelet she wore.

She gunned it back into drive. "Real interestin' bracelet ya got."

"…thanks. It… it was my grandmother's. Part of a set of two. My dad has the other one." She seemed distracted.

Onyx watched her out of the corner of her eye. "Where to, honey?"

"Oh, I'm actually," she looked deliberately out the window, "looking for someone named Onyx Alechi."

A weird feeling drummed through Onyx when the brunette said her name. She smiled, and felt somehow it was probably strained. "That's me, darlin'," she said. "Onyx Alechi, most unfortunate creature on God's green Earth, if ya ask the good folks of Layne's Cove."

"Watson Justice," the brunette said, still staring determinedly at the passing forest.

"Can I call you-"

"Wat? Sure."

Onyx narrowed her eyes slightly, then looked back at the road. "What sorta business ya got with me?"

"It's… complicated. It relates to your fiancé, Peter Salt, actually."

Onyx looked her over. Looked like she was about the same age as her, and easy on the eyes, too. "You ain't never met him before, have ya? Not an ex-girlfriend or anything like?"

"No, no," Wat said quickly, looking at Onyx again. "Nothing like that. It's just…"

"What do ya want with me, then?"

Wat swallowed hard. "Listen, I'd rather not discuss this in the car. We- you… I, um, actually - there isn't a motel in Layne's Cove, is there?"

Onyx shook her head. "Used to be one, but it done burned down two summers past. Arsonists."

Wat blinked. "Are there a lot of those around here?"

"Yeah," Onyx said with a shrug. "It were actually arsonists who started the fire that killed my folks."

"I'm… sorry to hear that."

"It was near a decade ago. Idiot who done it got caught, anyway. But enough 'bout me - you ain't got someplace to stay the night?"

"No."

"Well, shoot, Peter done took in _us_ poor wayfarin' strangers - me an' my brother, I mean - so I'm sure he wouldn't mind lettin' ya sleep in the barn."

"I think I'd prefer someplace with air conditioning," Wat said lightly, brushing sweat-slicked strands of hair out of her face. Onyx laughed. Wat got a strange expression - something like relief, or appreciation. Onyx stopped abruptly, suddenly uncomfortable.

"I was kiddin' about the barn," she said, trying to think if she was _sure_ she'd never met Wat before. She couldn't have. It was impossible. "We've had a spare room ever since I started sleepin' in Peter's bed. You're welcome to it, hon."

"Thanks."

* * *

 _August 1, 2:10 PM, Peter Salt's house_

The property looked just the same as Watson had left it, except some of the kudzu they'd cut back was still there. It was a disquieting solace to see.

Even now she still winced at the way Tuck ran over the gravel driveway without shoes or socks. "Onyx!" he yelled.

"Tuck!" Onyx yelled back with the same tone of voice, throwing open the driver's side door and hopping out. Watson did the same.

"Onyx, the- who's _that?_ " Tuck said, pointing at Watson.

Onyx swatted his hand down. "Don't you point, Tuck, it's rude. And this is Watson Justice - picked her up on the side of the road. She's from _California_ ," she added sotto voce.

"California?" Tuck said, "whew, lady. Bless your heart." Onyx elbowed him, and he giggled.

Watson still didn't get the 'bless your heart' thing. She still thought it sounded nice.

"I hear they have lots of real cool caves in California, Miss Watson!" Tuck said, grinning widely.

"Yeah, there are," Watson said, without the forced friendliness of the first time around. After spending a week with the kid, talking to him felt natural. "I went to one called Kurain Caverns last year." She still didn't mention, though, that she'd gone because there had been a murder in it, one that his future self had perpetuated. Why _would_ she tell him? She was here to _prevent_ that. "And call me 'Wat', please."

"Now," Onyx said, turning to Watson, "what kinda business ya got with me?" She seemed on-edge. Watson had seen her on-edge far too many times, she felt.

"But Onyx!" Tuck said.

"Tuck, don't you interrupt!"

"But _Onyx!_ The cave people done just arrived after ya left, for the Wonder Cave thing they doin'!" He pointed back towards the house.

Onyx slapped a hand to her forehead. "Consarn it," she exclaimed, "I thought they wasn't comin' 'til tomorrow! Sorry, Wat, I gots ta deal with this."

"It's fine," Watson said quickly, "actually, I need to speak with one of the speleologists."

"Really? Well, it's not like I was plannin' on letting my Peter run off for a week with a buncha people I don't know anyway. C'mon, let's go get introduced."

Onyx grabbed Watson's hand to drag her to the kitchen, but Watson readily went with her. It was the same as it had been a week ago. Kitty Kitaki, Mary Mec, Sen Ekha, Maren Go… Peter Salt.

"Ay, is this ya girl, Pete?"

"Just the blonde one."

"Who's the other one?"

"No idea. Onyx, we don't need more strays around here. You and your brother are enough."

"She ain't a stray. She ain't even staying that long."

The conversation played out exactly as before.

"I'm Watson Justice," Watson volunteered before Onyx could do it for her.

"Justice?" Kitaki said, raising her eyebrows. "That sounds kinda fami-"

Ekha interrupted her. "W-Watson, huh? C-Can I call you 'Wat'?"

Watson almost laughed, remembering the stupid _Wattie_ nickname he'd tried to give her in '53. "Sure."

"…anyway," Onyx said, rocking on her heels, "Peter, darlin', honey, sugar booger, love of my life-"

"What do you want," Salt sighed.

"Wat here don't have a place to stay for the night-"

"She can sleep in the barn."

"I done told her already she can take the guest bedroom 'til she's ready to go back out west. You really gon' deny her hospitality, Peter?" Onyx said, her tone suddenly forceful.

An awkward pause. Salt gave the two of them a rather fake smile. "No, of course not. She's welcome to the guest bedroom. My team and I will be spending the next week in Wonder Cave, anyway."

"Swell," Onyx said, then glanced at Watson, silently prompting her to say something.

"Ah, right," Watson said, "I need to speak with Hana Ka'eleku."

Kitaki looked around. "She still on the can?" she said.

Hana Lavatob stepped into the kitchen through another door, drying her hands off on the bottom of her shirt, saying, "Sorry about that, everyone, the food down here just doesn't appear to agree with me. Now, where were w-" She stopped and stared at Watson.

"Ms. Ka'eleku," Watson said with as friendly of a smile as she could.

Lavatob's eyes were wide. Out of the corner of her eye, Watson saw Onyx glancing between her and Lavatob. She almost looked… suspicious.

"You two know each other?" Go said.

"We met once," Watson said, "a year ago. In passing."

"…that is correct," Lavatob said blandly. "Miss- Justice I believe it was?" She glanced around the room, then offered her hand to Onyx. "Hana Ka'eleku, geochemist."

The rest of the speleologists quickly introduced themselves. Watson ignored them until Salt interrupted them.

"Onyx doesn't need to know who you all are, only that she needs to stay out of our way during preparations."

"It's real nice to meet y'all," Onyx said brightly.

"What did I just say, Onyx?" Peter said.

"Anyway, before you go," Watson said, shaking her head, "I need to have a word with you, Ka'eleku."

Lavatob glanced back at Salt, who grunted noncommittally. "Alright," she said, her jaw set.

"I'll go put some sheets an' pillows on the bed in the guest bedroom," Onyx said after her as Watson and Lavatob stepped outside.

"Alright," Watson said once they were out on the porch, crossing her arms and drawing herself up to her full height - a couple inches taller than Lavatob - after checking to make sure Tuck wasn't around. "I think we both know how we both came here."

Lavatob gave her a strained smile. "Are you here to kill me?" she said.

Watson blinked. "What?"

"Are you here to kill me?" Lavatob said again, "I thought you usually sent Flint's cousin to do all your dirty work."

Watson's eyebrows drew together. _Flint's cousin_ must refer to Misty-2057; while Watson had certainly known she worked for the Tula Group, she hadn't known she was directly affiliated with ωatson.

"Why would I want to kill you?" Watson said. Killing time travelers seemed to be more Macario Armando's thing.

Lavatob opened her mouth in a little 'o' of surprise, then leaned forward, scrunitizing Watson's face. Watson tilted her head away slightly, uncomfortable. Then Lavatob let out a short, incredulous laugh.

"Your eyes," she said. "You're not Omega Watson."

 _My… eyes?_ "No, of course I'm not. Why would Omega Watson want to kill you?"

"Because I stole my time travel device from her group." She shook her head. "But if you're here… perhaps there's a chance for things to turn out alright."

"Why are you here?" Watson pressed.

"Same reason as you, I suspect. I need to prevent the Kurain Caverns case." She settled back into impassivity, casting a disinterested eye over Watson. "I heard you had a thing for Alechi back then; I suppose you came here to keep him out of jail in the future. I, myself, had a much more personal reason."

Watson frowned. "What happened?"

"You forgot? …I suppose it _was_ just another job to you." She shrugged. "Do you recall that Alechi poisoned me?"

"Oh," Watson said. There must be some long-lasting repercussions of whatever kind of poison Tuck had used, if Lavatob still felt the need to go back in time and prevent her poisoning seven years after the fact. "Lavatob, back when you first joined the speleologist group, did anyone remember you being around in 2044?"

Lavatob gesticulated noncommittally. "I don't think so. It never came up. Certainly no one acted as though they had ever seen me or someone very like me when I first joined up with them."

Watson nodded, thinking. So when Lavatob had died last time - that had been a fluke, and not the true path of the universe. Whatever happened here, Lavatob survived it to leave this time, and the memories of her had been erased.

"Alright," Watson said, "that's all I needed to know."

Lavatob raised an eyebrow. "No proposal to work together?" she said. "We have the same goal - to prevent the suicide of Onyx Alechi, so Tuck Alechi won't take his revenge nine years later and drag everyone else down with him, too."

"Oh," Watson said again, "ah. You do have a point."

"I will be spending the next week with Peter. You will stay here with Onyx, won't you?"

Watson nodded. "You try to stop Salt from giving her that ultimatum in the first place - I'll make sure Onyx doesn't go through with it this time."

Lavatob nodded and stuck out her hand. Watson shook it.

"I should get back with the group now," Lavatob said, turning back and opening the door. "…by the way, Justice."

"Hm?"

"What do you mean _this time?_ "

"…nothing. Just… nothing."


	5. Chapter 5

_August 1, 6:00 PM, Peter Salt's house, Kitchen_

"Biscuits an' gravy!" Tuck exclaimed.

"Ah," Watson said in surprise. She'd forgotten about this first dinner with the Alechis.

"Sorry, do y'all ain't got this in Los Angeles?" Onyx said, setting a plate in front of Watson. "Beef gravy, hon, you tear up yer biscuits and mix 'em in, and ya eat it like that."

"We got collards and fried green tomatoes, too," Tuck chirped, tearing his biscuit into large pieces. Onyx grabbed it from him. "Hey!"

"We gotta say grace first!" Onyx said. Tuck gave her an exaggeratedly pouty frown, then folded his hands and closed his eyes. Onyx did the same. So did Watson.

Some things are just very easy to get used to.

"Well, dig in!" Onyx said. She glanced over at Watson. "At least _try_ everythin', dearie. Could be worse. We coulda served ya squirrel."

"Oh, right," Watson said, "you eat squirrel down here…" She'd never been served any in the past week.

"They easy to shoot," Onyx said, shrugging.

"What do ya eat in California?" Tuck asked.

"Um… Japanese food is popular."

"Like sushi and stuff? Ain't that raw fish with rice an' seaweed?" Tuck practically inhaled a big spoonful of his gravy-biscuit mix. "An' you think we're _weird_ for eatin' _squirrel?_ "

"Tuck," Onyx said reproachfully, then sat down and looked at Watson again. "Alright, Wat, darlin', not ta change the subject or nothin'…"

 _Oh boy, here it comes,_ Watson thought, stirring her biscuits into her gravy.

"…but what kinda business do ya have with me, for real? I ain't never met you before in my life. How have ya even _heard_ of me?"

"Guess you got one bull of a reputation, ma'am," Tuck said, and he laughed.

Onyx rolled her eyes. "I _know_ about my reputation, Tuck, but there ain't no way it's spread all the way to California."

Watson shook her head. "Don't even ask how I've heard of you," she said, "it's difficult to explain. _Very_ difficult. But I _have_ heard of you - and I've heard of something that Peter Salt… _plans_ to do."

Onyx raised an eyebrow, folding her hands under her chin, her dinner suddenly forgotten. "Plans?"

Watson glanced over at Tuck, who had gone very quiet and was eating his greens without looking at either of them. "Probably best not to say in front of your brother."

"Grown-up stuff, huh?"

"Something like that."

Onyx shrugged, her expression plainly reading that she would ask Watson again later, and changed the subject. They eventually got around to Watson's profession, and Tuck once again asked about "tempura physics" and the conversation went the same as it had the first time around.

The blackberry cobbler, too, tasted as good as it did the first time around.

* * *

 _August 2, 6:48 AM, Peter Salt's house_

Watson walked through the dew-coated grass at the crack of dawn. Onyx was already out there, with the chicken feed.

"Hey," she said.

"…morning."

"Sleep well? Ya look like you didn't."

Watson shook her head. "I'm fine." She hadn't been expecting to sleep as poorly as she did, considering it had been well over 24 hours since her last rest, but it seemed as soon as she closed her eyes she found herself staring at Onyx's corpse hanging from the rafters. It was just a dream, of course, and from where she was standing now it was hard to assert that it had even really happened in the first place - but her swinging body, and the way her face looked, pale and swollen, lips blue and freckles standing out starkly against sheet-white skin… it was burned into Watson's mind.

But of course she couldn't share that with Onyx.

"Mind helpin' a gal out with her chores? Them chickens ain't gonna feed themselves."

"Sure."

Onyx was alive right now and even if Watson screwed up again, she'd still be alive for another week. And Watson would have liked to think that that was all that mattered, but maybe that was where she'd messed up last time. Maybe she'd been too focused on the present - how odd, she usually never cared for it at all - and she'd forgotten to work to prevent the future.

 _No, not prevent_ , she reminded herself. She couldn't prevent. She was here to change the timeline. By the end of the week, they had to be out of the alpha timeline.

"Don't give 'em too much now, they're stupid little creatures an' they don't know when to stop," Onyx said as they scattered feed.

Lavatob was still bothering her, though. If her testimony was accurate, then she hadn't died or otherwise stayed in 2044, and that was why the other speleologists didn't recognize her when she joined later, at a younger age.

So why, then, had this timeline still registered as the alpha timeline after her death? Was it because of the upcoming reset?

"Alright," Onyx said, closing up the feed bag and giving Watson a careful look, "we gotta talk, sugar."

Watson nodded numbly.

"What did ya mean about something Peter _plans_ to do?"

"Can you answer something for me, honestly?" Watson said.

"Honestly?" Onyx said. "Of course, I'll answer anythin' honestly. We're honest folk down here, don't ya know?"

"If you were… gone, do you really think Salt would take care of your brother?"

Onyx narrowed her eyes, perhaps slightly confused. "Gone? If I had to leave here, I'd sure take Tuck with me. Ain't no question about that."

"What if you couldn't?"

"You mean if I was dead."

Watson flinched. "Y… Yeah. If you were dead. Would you trust Salt to take care of Tuck?"

Onyx seemed lost in thought for a few moments. In the dim early morning light, Watson could just see her jaw twitch as she ground her teeth together.

"What kinda question is that?" Onyx said at length.

"The whole reason why I'm here."

"You ain't one of them government types, are you?" Onyx said, with the same forceful tone as she had used on Salt the day before. Watson grimaced. Onyx hadn't ever used it on her before.

"No, no- I have a different reason to concern myself with this."

"Ain't none of your beeswax." She started carrying the feed bag back to the barn. Watson tagged along. "I'd _never_ leave Tuck behind - ain't nothing in the 'verse can take him from me. Not Peter, not the road, not the government-"

"Not even death," Watson finished the sentence.

"And not _you_ ," Onyx went on, whipping her head around.

Watson took a step back. She wasn't sure what it was exactly she had said to set her off like this. It was- it was like the last conversation they had before she died, before Watson had accidentally reset the week.

Onyx stopped, seemed to think, then gave her a very thin, flat smile. "Just let it be, Wat."

Watson bit back a reply.

"…we can talk about this later," Onyx said, turning around again and picking up some vine shears. "If it's that important to you."

"It is," Watson said.

"Then I'll need _you_ to be honest with me, too."

Watson didn't ask what she had done to make Onyx think she was being less than honest.

* * *

 _August 5, 5:45 PM, Grundy County_

The shade of the trees combated the broiling mid-afternoon nicely. It was humid down here by the creek, too, but more pleasantly so - and it was gorgeous besides that, everything from the dappled shadows to the incessant buzz of cicadas and peeping of frogs, even the earthy smell of moss and dirt and clear, fresh, cold water. Watson wouldn't have ever guessed that any of those things would have a smell, back before she came here. She never would have even guessed there were places like this on Earth. Even Kurain Village was less… _alive_ than this.

Onyx came here to cool down every day after her chores were done. Watson had left her to it, last week. By the time Onyx was through with the day's work, Tuck had returned from school and he'd taken to Watson easily - of course he'd taken to her easily - and she would help him with his homework and chores. Around this time, Onyx would usually head back up to the house anyway, to get started on dinner. But she didn't today.

She didn't today because Watson had tagged along for the first time and Onyx seemed unwilling to interrupt the comfortable silence that reigned between the two as Watson sat on a large, mossy rock, and Onyx stood in the creek, overalls rolled up almost to her hips, boots left on the muddy bank.

"Who are you?"

Watson blinked. She almost didn't realize Onyx had spoke.

"Who are you?" Onyx said again, brushing a stray stand of hair back into her ponytail, watching Watson very intently.

"What do you mean, who am I?" Watson said.

"I mean how did ya come to hear of me, how did you get here- what business any of this is of yours, dear."

Watson bit her lip, drawing her legs up to herself. "That's a hard question."

"Just answer it."

"You won't believe me."

"Try me."

"I shouldn't."

Onyx narrowed her eyes. "Sugar, you wouldn't believe me if I told ya what I really am neither. Just tell me."

"What you really are?" Watson said. "What… are you?"

"I'll tell you if you tell me 'bout yourself."

Watson let out a hollow half-laugh that sounded more like a sigh. "I guess I _haven't_ tried the direct approach yet. Alright, fine. I…" she hesitated, "I'm from the future."

Onyx's expression didn't change.

"You don't believe me," Watson said.

"No, it sounds… _right_ , somehow. I believe ya." And she wasn't lying.

Watson rubbed her fingers over the hem of her shorts. She was wondering if perhaps Onyx remembered what happened before the reset somehow - obviously she didn't _remember_ remember, but maybe she had at least felt a sense of déjà vu, and it seemed she was unusually open to the truth of the matter. "I'm surprised."

"Well, it fits in with all the temporal physics you was talking about a few days ago, don't it?"

"…yeah."

"What year, then? How far in the future?"

"2054. I guess technically I'm supposed to be eleven years old right now."

"What brings ya to Grundy County, ten years ago?" Onyx said, and she seemed almost… afraid to hear the answer.

Watson was afraid to give it. She took a deep breath before speaking. "A year ago, in my time - so, 2053 - there was… a murder. And your brother was… involved."

"Did he die or did he done it?" Onyx said very quietly.

"He… was guilty."

"Who, and why?" Her question was too immediate, not horrified enough.

"Peter Salt. He was responsible for your death."

There was a very long pause. Somewhere in the woods, a deer started.

"Oh," Onyx said at last.

"I just wanted to… stop it."

"And… Hana Ka'eleku? I overheard y'all talking about… stoppin' Peter from giving 'that ultimatum', and you said you'd stop me from 'going through with it'."

"You were listening?" Watson gasped.

"Only the tail bit o' the conversation…" She looked away deliberately. "But I thought when you said you intended to stop me from goin' through with something, you was referrin' to… something else."

"Like what?"

"…I dunno. What _was_ you referring to?"

Watson closed her eyes, and again she saw Onyx dead. "In the timeline I came from, you committed suicide."

"That don't sound like something I'd do."

"I… I know. Maybe it was murder. But- Peter Salt wasn't anywhere near you when you died, believe me."

Onyx looked down into the water for a long time, sifting through the sediment with her foot, watching it billow away in the gentle current. "When?" she said.

"The ninth."

"Four days from now."

"Less. It's already mid-afternoon, and you died in the early morning."

"…I see."

There was another very long pause. Watson almost hoped Tuck would come down and interrupt them and ask what was for dinner, because she didn't have the courage to end this conversation herself. She rested her head on her knees.

Finally, she said, "would you really do it? Would you really kill yourself?"

"I dunno how to answer that, darlin'."

"Can you- can you think of _any_ situation where you might decide it'd be better just to die?"

"No, course not," Onyx said, but Watson's bracelet contracted.

"You're lying," she said without even looking up at her.

"…"

"You… left a note. All it said was 'Please take care of Tuck'. Everyone supposed it was addressed to Peter Salt because everyone supposed you really thought he loved you."

Onyx laughed. Watson's head jerked up. Onyx was slowly shaking her head, still grinning like this was all some black joke and she had a _very_ dark sense of humor.

"Now _that_ don't sound right," she said.

"Huh?"

"Ain't no way I would have addressed a note like that to _Peter_. Musta been meant for someone else."

* * *

 _August 8, 3:30 PM, Grundy County_

It wasn't until after dinner that day that Watson realized that Onyx had never clarified on "what she was." And she'd also found that, despite her warning, they were still in the alpha alpha timeline. Whatever circumstance had lead to Onyx's suicide - why, why couldn't it have been a murder? That would have been so much easier to prevent - it was still set to happen.

Maybe that wasn't surprising. After that conversation, the rest of the week passed in the same now-familiar pattern. Even the private conversations between Watson and Onyx barely hinted at it - sometimes Onyx would ask about Watson's life "back home", but it seemed she was just as interested in hearing what life out west was like as hearing what life in the future was like.

The speleologist group returned sans one member.

"She's also from the future, ain't she?" Onyx said very quietly from where she and Watson were standing on the porch, watching the scientists unpack their equipment in grim, almost nervous silence.

"Yes," Watson said, a sour taste in her mouth, "she was."

"Was she here to prevent the same thing as you are?"

"Yes. She was."

So later when Onyx got Ehkha to tell her that Lavatob had fallen in the underground river and died, Watson wasn't surprised. And a few minutes later, when she saw her time travel device was still registering α, she still wasn't surprised.

"But _how_ ," she whispered to herself, closing her eyes.

"How what?" Onyx said, leaning on her doorway.

Watson hadn't explained the concept of alternate timelines to her yet. She didn't want to. Didn't want to remind herself that this whole juncture was pointless - no matter how attached she got to Onyx, the Onyx from _her_ timeline, the _real_ timeline, was dead already and was going to stay that way.

"Nothing."

"Tell me."

It was such a definitive order that Watson felt almost helpless to spill her guts. "Time is… kind of like a rope, made up of many threads - many different realities. The central thread is the alpha timeline - well, technically the alpha alpha timeline, because there are many different 'ropes' - but the alpha timeline is the _true_ reality, and all the other timelines, such as alpha beta, alpha gamma... alpha epsilon… they're just variations on the alpha alpha timeline."

"So they're not 'real'," Onyx said, stilling leaning on the doorjamb, crossing her arms.

"Right. But the thing about the alpha timeline is that it's the one where all the interference from time travelers comes in the form of closed loops. Other timelines may have paradoxes; the alpha timeline can't. That means that it's mappable." She turned her head away slightly. "That means that, for the alpha timeline, both the past and the future are set in stone."

"So, like pre-determination," Onyx said. "No free will or nothin'."

Watson shrugged helplessly. "Free will's just a fairy tale humans made up to comfort themselves. The fact of the matter is that, essentially, everything's already happened. We're in the alpha timeline right now."

"Glad to know I'm real, then," Onyx said, eyebrows raised.

" _Damn it,_ Onyx, that's the _problem_ -" Watson cut herself off, then took a deep breath and started again: "You commit suicide in the alpha timeline, _tonight_. There's no way _around_ that. It _happens_. I don't know what kind of stupid thing 'Ka'eleku' got in her head about this, but when _I_ came back here to prevent your death I didn't do so so that I could return to my own time and no longer have to visit your brother in the _prison_ every time I wanted to talk. Nothing would _change_ when I got back - I just came back because I… because I…" she clenched her fists, looking at the floor, "because I wanted to make sure there was an alternate timeline where you lived and he was happy… and _you_ were happy… even if it wasn't real, it still would be nice to have assurance that there was _some_ version of you out there that… that…"

"I get it," Onyx said, not quite meeting Watson's eyes when she looked up. "An' I guess it wouldn't matter much to the alternate versions of Tuck an' I, that they ain't real… they wouldn't even know."

"I just… want you to continue your life. Even if it's fake."

"Awful nice of you."

There was a pause. Watson put the time travel device back. "The problem is that we're still in the alpha timeline, and I don't understand how. 'Ka'eleku''s death should have forced us into another timeline, since that's something that definitely _didn't happen_ in the alpha timeline. I'd know if it did, because I met her last year - when she was 21 years old and going by her real name, Lavatob."

"I don't see how it shoulda changed the timelines, hon," Onyx said, frowning, "she might be dead now but when you met her in the future she was _younger_. Seems pretty straightforward ta me."

"That's… the other thing. In the future, no one _remembered_ Hana 'Ka'eleku'."

"In that case, shouldn't'a her time-travellin' in the first place changed this from the alpha timeline? Since she did come back to the past and all…"

"Actually, when a time-traveler leaves…" Watson's eyes were stinging and she wasn't sure why. "…everyone who actually _belongs_ in that time forgets them, and the changes they've made to the timeline are pretty much undone. There's a couple ways around it - certain types of neurological damage, for instance, and if someone's been through time themselves - and… well, obviously if the time traveler _never leaves_ , for instance if they die, they'll never be forgotten and any changes they made to the timeline will be cemented, unless someone else comes in to fix them… so…" She swallowed uncomfortably. Her throat felt rather dry. "Whether or not Lavatob's time-travelling was part of the alpha timeline, it's certain that she didn't die here, because then she _would_ _have been_ remembered. But she wasn't. And that's also why I can never be sure if I've managed to change time yet or not - because in Tuck's future, in my present, there's no evidence I was here."

Onyx scratched her jaw, just under her ear, eyes shadowed. "So even if time changes and I live on in an alternate timeline… I ain't gonna remember you."

Watson wasn't surprised that that was what Onyx took away from that whole spiel. It was, after all, all she herself could think about.

"Yeah," she said in a parched voice. "You won't. It's probably for the best."

Onyx gave her a very weak smile. "Hey, on the bright side o' things, if something happens tonight… at least I'll die rememberin' you, right?"

Watson stiffened. "Onyx, no… please, you can't… you've got to change the timeline. I think- maybe you're the only one who _can_."

Onyx closed her eyes. "Oh, I don't want to die. But… I don't want to forget you, either, Wat."

* * *

 _August 8, 11:30 PM, Peter Salt's house_

Muffled yelling down the hall, coming from Onyx and Salt's room. The door creaked open, then slammed. Salt's heavy footsteps passed Watson's room, then, listening carefully, she heard the beat-up old Chevy pickup truck's engine roar to life, crunch out of the driveway, and recede down the road.

Watson sat up. She supposed that everything was up to Onyx now. Still, she walked down the hall and peered into Onyx's room - just the same as a week ago. Window open, bugscreen popped. No one there.

Forcing herself to stay calm, she glanced around. The only other time she'd been in here was, well, a week ago. It was a fairly normal room - double bed, matching bedside tables, mismatched lamps, a dresser with a somewhat old TV on it, a safe in one corner of the room, an art print framed on the wall. Nothing interesting. Nothing that hinted at what exactly Onyx and Salt had been arguing _about_.

Watson stared out the window, looking at the barn. She'd promised Onyx that she could continue to live her full life if only she threw away reality. So she'd just have to trust Onyx to make that choice.

She wasn't even sure if she'd have been able to make that choice herself.

* * *

 _August 9, 6:53 AM, The barn_

Watson had her time travel device on her because no matter the outcome, she couldn't stay around. Either Onyx wouldn't be in here and she could go back to 2054 Los Angeles, or she would and Watson could hit the return button and anyway and hope that she'd be granted another reset, another chance.

Despite knowing what to do no matter what she saw, Watson still hesitated before throwing open the barn doors.

The dawn light illuminated Onyx's neck, stretched out and purple-red where the noose bit into it just under her jaw. Her bare feet danged about eighteen inches above the floor. Her beautiful black eyes were mostly closed, with a sliver of white at the bottom of her eyelids like broken bones protruding from skin.

Watson closed her eyes tightly and pulled out the time travel device.

RETURN


	6. Chapter 6

_August 1, 1:00 PM, Grundy County, Tennessee_

 _Loop Three_

Onyx Alechi bounded down the road in a beat-up old Chevy pickup truck, Keith Urban blaring out her window and dust and small rocks flying behind her. She stopped with a screech of brakes just short of a ponytailed brunette with a dancer's physique under a pristine white labcoat.

"Hey," Onyx said, leaning out the driver's side window. "What do ya think you're doin', walkin' in the middle of the road like that? You gon' get yourself killed!"

"Onyx?" said the brunette in some kind of West Coast accent.

Onyx blinked. Did she know this person? She looked familiar somehow, but she clearly wasn't from around here. "Where-?"

"My name's Watson Justice, you can call me Wat, I'm from Los Angeles, and I need to speak with you. It's very important."

Onyx _never_ liked the sound of things that were "very important". Still, there was _something_ about this Wat girl that Onyx… trusted, on some level she didn't quite understand. Maybe it was just because she was easy on the eyes. "Well," Onyx said with a self-assured smile, "hop in, hon. We can talk in the car. I ain't headed anywhere in particular right now, just cruisin'."

"Thank you," Wat said, climbing in. She didn't buckle up, and she was sweating like a sinner in church, absently wiping her chin with the back of her hand.

"Real interestin' bracelet ya got," Onyx said as she gunned back into drive.

Wat shook her head. "Nevermind the bracelet. Look, Onyx, I know you probably don't recognize me, but you have to listen to me. Something's going to happen in one week, and you'll- attempt suicide."

"I… what?" Onyx said, her hands tightening on the steering wheel.

"I need you _not to do that_."

* * *

 _August 1, 2:10 PM, Peter Salt's house_

 _Loop Five_

"Onyx, the- who's _that?_ " Tuck said, pointing at Watson.

Onyx swatted his hand down. "Don't you point, Tuck, it's rude. And this is Watson Justice - picked her up on the side of the road. She's from _California_ ," she added sotto voce.

"California?" Tuck said, "whew, lady. Bless your heart." Onyx elbowed him, and he giggled.

By now Watson had learned that Southerners were masters of passive aggressive insults that don't really sound like insults.

* * *

 _August 1, 2:30 PM, Peter Salt's house, Front porch_

 _Loop Eight_

Watson crossed her arms and drew herself up to her full height - a couple inches taller than Lavatob. "Let's get this out of the way. You stole a time travel device from the Tula Group and came back in time to prevent Onyx Alechi's suicide because in the process of his revenge nine years in the future, Tuck Alechi will poison you, leading to severe medical issues that persist seven years in the future."

Lavatob gave her a strained smile. "Are you here to kill me?"

"No."

"I suppose I can believe that. You usually send Flint's cousin to do your dirty work."

"She isn't here, it's just me. I came here to do the same thing you did - to prevent Onyx's death."

"Oh." The corner of her mouth twitched. "That's right, you had a thing for Tuck back then." She leaned forward slightly, scrutinizing Watson's face. Watson didn't move. "Your eyes…"

"…yes?"

"They're… nevermind. I thought you were Omega Watson. But I guess you aren't yet."

It seemed like months since Watson had been surprised by something. "Yet? What do you mean by _yet?_ "

"If you don't already know, then I'm sure it's best I don't say."

* * *

 _August 1, 6:00 PM, Peter Salt's house, Kitchen_

 _Loop Nine_

"Biscuits and gravy!" Tuck and Watson exclaimed at the same time.

"You like it?" Onyx said, setting a plate in front of Watson. "Do y'all got this in Los Angeles?"

"Oh, no, not really," Watson said, "Japanese food is more popular there."

"Like sushi and stuff? Ain't that raw fish with rice an' seaweed?" Tuck said, tearing his biscuit into large pieces. Onyx grabbed it from him. "Hey!"

"You think that's weird?" Watson teased. "You eat squirrel down here."

"They easy to shoot," Onyx shrugged.

"What's it taste like, anyway?" Watson said. She still hadn't had any.

"Kind of like rabbit," Onyx said, "but sweeter."

"Oh. What's rabbit taste like?"

* * *

 _August 2, 6:48 AM, Peter Salt's house_

 _Loop Fifteen_

"Hey."

"Morning."

"Sleep well? Ya look like you didn't."

Watson shook her head. With every reset came a new dead Onyx, and after her sixth attempt, she'd started to get creative with ways to ensure that Onyx didn't kill herself - but she always died some other way, always in the early hours of August ninth. Slip and break her neck. Drown in the creek. Car accident. Choke on a blackberry. Heck, two times she'd just randomly died of some kind of heart attack or aneurysm or _something_ even though she really was far too young for that.

"Mind helpin' a gal out with her chores? Them chickens ain't gonna feed themselves."

"Sure."

Watson had read about 'fixed events' but had always assumed they were hypothetical - and optimistic, since by its very nature a 'fixed event' assumed that the rest of the timeline was in flux and changeable. If anything, from what Watson had seen, all of time was made up of fixed events. But maybe, she was thinking now, a fixed event was something that always happened the same way in every timeline - something that couldn't be changed to create an alternate timeline, no matter how hard anyone tried.

Maybe Onyx's death was a fixed event. Maybe she was just wasting her time. Or sanity, more like. She'd already spent more than three months trying to change things, but her body hadn't aged a day - hair and nails hadn't grown a millimeter, and every time she reset the heat and humidity assaulted her anew. Nothing was changing, not at all, in any sense.

But still she kept coming back.

"Don't give 'em too much now, they're stupid little creatures an' they don't know when to stop."

 _Sounds like someone I know_ , Watson thought.

* * *

 _August 5, 5:45 PM, Grundy County_

 _Loop Twenty-six_

The creek water was so cold Watson couldn't really feel her feet anymore, but she honestly didn't notice. Onyx was a little ways further down the stream, turning over rocks to find crayfish to eat with dinner.

"So," Onyx said, not looking up at Watson, "how many times now have you done it?"

She wasn't continuing an earlier conversation but there was no need for Watson to ask what she was talking about. "This is my twenty-sixth attempt."

"So you've seen me die twenty-five times."

"…yeah."

"But you keep comin' back."

"Yeah."

Onyx tossed another crayfish to Watson, who dropped it into the bucket on the shore. "I guess that explains it. It's been naggin' at me for a while - I saw you, and knew for _sure_ I'd met you somewhere before. But I just… couldn't quite recall…"

Watson shook her head. "I guess after enough times around, even the non-time-travelers will start to remember at least somehow."

"Ain't no one else but me seem to remember you, though."

"You _are_ the reason I keep coming back."

Onyx stood up. Light and shadow played over her figure and she looked so beautiful. She looked like she _belonged_ in this forest that somehow seemed more alive and _real_ than every gritty street in Los Angeles. Her hair was the exact color of dry hay, her freckles seemed more like soil splashed across her flesh - rich and fertile and the freezing water than ran in rivulets down her skin did nothing to wash it away because it was a part of her as much as it was a part of the land. And her _eyes_ , black and sparkling and always looking at Watson like she could see _more_ than just her outward appearance - they looked like they belonged to the depths of the Earth itself.

"Why," she said in that Southern drawl of hers, "do you keep comin' back?"

Watson didn't know how to answer that.

* * *

 _August 8, 3:30 PM, Grundy County_

 _Loop Thirty_

The speleologist group returned sans one member.

* * *

 _August 8, 11:40 PM, The barn_

 _Loop Forty_

Watson fell to her knees. Onyx looked down at her sympathetically from where she was perched on the rafter, tying a rope in a noose.

"You can't," Watson said, her voice thick, "you can't. Not again."

"I'm sorry," Onyx said.

"Please, you've got to go on."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because it's better for Tuck to live with a dead sister than one in prison."

Watson slumped forward, her hands splayed against the straw-covered floor of the barn. Everything was so… blurry. "We can cover it up. Who cares about some stupid money?"

"Peter done caught me red-handed."

"Then we'll get you away from here. You and Tuck. No one has to know you tried to steal from Salt - no one has to know you lost patience waiting for him to marry you…"

"We cain't run forever," Onyx said. "Unless… ya take us back to 2054 with you."

There was a long pause. Tears fell onto the backs of Watson's hands.

"I can't," she said hoarsely, "I can't bring you into that world. It's too _dark_."

Another long pause.

"Then I'm sorry," Onyx said, without a trace of emotion in her voice. "Please… take care of Tuck."

It had been twenty-eight resets since Watson finally figured out that suicide note was addressed to her and always had been.

Watson shut her eyes tightly when she heard the snap of the rope. She was afraid to open them. She knew she'd see Onyx's feet suspended eighteen inches above the ground.

* * *

 _August 1, 1:00 PM, Grundy County, Tennessee_

 _Loop Fifty-five_

The brakes screeched. Keith Urban paused.

"Hey," Onyx said, leaning out the driver's side window. "Wat. It's real nice to see you again."

Watson smiled tiredly. "You ready for another round?"

"I gotta do what I gotta do, Wat. I've got more than just this week's future ta think about."

* * *

 _August 1, 2:30 PM, Peter Salt's house, Front porch_

 _Loop Seventy-three_

"Are you here to kill me?" Lavatob asked.

"You're… irrelevant," Watson said, looking away from her. "You're just a litmus for if this timeline will change or not."

Lavatob raised her eyebrows in confusion, then drew them together, looking at Watson closely. "But-"

"I'm not Omega Watson," Watson snarled.

"What do you mean, you're not? You clearly are. Your eyes prove it."

"…nevermind." Watson hopped off the porch and stalked away. What did Lavatob know, anyway?

* * *

 _August 5, 5:45 PM, Grundy County_

 _Loop Eighty-one_

Watson looked down at her reflection in the water and wondered why it looked different.

* * *

 _August 8, 11:00 PM, Peter Salt's house_

 _Loop Ninety-nine_

"Why do you keep doing it?" Watson demanded, her hand tight around Onyx's arm. "You two are getting married soon anyway - half his assets will be yours, legally. All that money in the safe…"

"I can't keep living like this," Onyx said, snatching her arm away.

"Just- be patient. Be patient and you won't have to die tonight."

"Wat, ya don't understand," Onyx snapped, shaking her head in a quick, violent jerk, "you've been livin' the same week over and over so long that you've forgotten that Tuck and I have _the rest of our lives_ to deal with after you leave. We need that money so we can get _out_ of here an' I _won't_ have to marry Peter."

"But you were _fine_ with it before!" Watson yelled.

"Things were _different_ before!" Onyx yelled back.

Watson lowered her voice, not wanting Tuck to overhear too much. "Oh?" she said in a sharp whisper, "what changed then?"

"I met _you_ ," Onyx said, "I met you an' I realized I couldn't stand the thought of being married to that _snake._ "

Watson was silent.

Onyx turned around, facing the door of her room again. "So I'm gonna get that money and if Peter catches me then so be it. If he catches me I'm gonna have to kick the bucket so's at least Tuck can get away clean. Best you could do for me is to make sure Peter don't walk in while I'm crackin' his combination."

"But I tried that," Watson said. Her own voice sounded broken to her ears. "I've tried that and you always die anyway."

"Then give it one more try."

"Isn't there anything else I could do to stop this?"

"You tell me, hon. I for one cain't think of anything that don't require you to stay after tomorrow mornin'."

* * *

 _August 2, 7:00 AM, The barn, Chicken shed_

 _Loop One Hundred_

"Don't give 'em too much now, they're stupid little creatures an' they don't know when to stop."

"…"

"Wat? What's wrong, dear? …why you cryin'?"

* * *

 _August 1, 2:30 PM, Peter Salt's house, Front porch_

 _Loop One Hundred Twelve_

"Omega Watson," Lavatob called her, and Watson realized that way in back in the first reset, when Lavatob had said _perhaps there's a chance for things to turn out alright_ , she wasn't referring to Onyx's suicide. She was referring to maybe, just maybe, Watson wouldn't turn out the way ωatson did.

No… not just that. Maybe she wouldn't turn _into_ ωatson. But it had been a long time since Lavatob had looked at her and commented, "You're not… her?" There was still a bit of unsurety, though, that made Watson think that maybe she hadn't completed her metamorphosis yet. Not quite yet.

But if Watson couldn't save Onyx… maybe _ωatson_ could.

…she didn't talk to Lavatob again after that.

* * *

 _August 5, 5:45 PM, Grundy County_

 _Loop One Hundred Twenty-four_

Watson slipped on a smooth stone on the bottom of the creekbed, splashing into the water. She sat up, pushing wet hair out of her face, and Onyx looked at her and laughed and Watson laughed too and it felt good, to laugh with someone she'd seen die 123 times but met on a backwoods dirt road 124 times.

"I wish I could take you with me," Watson said, standing and wringing out her shirt.

"I know," Onyx said, "I do too."

Sometimes it almost felt like the two of them were just using Onyx's death as a way to make sure they'd get to spend just one more week together before Watson returned to her own time. As always when she thought of that, Watson felt a pang in her chest.

Onyx playfully grabbed her, pushing her back down into the freezing water. Watson gasped, and Onyx leaned over her, propping herself up with hands planted in the mud on either side of Watson's shoulders.

"We need to stop this," she said. Somewhere in the depths of her black eyes, she was very sad.

"I know," Watson said this time.

It had been ninety-five resets since Watson had figured out the answer to why she kept coming back.

Onyx softly kissed her on the mouth.

* * *

 _August 8, 3:30 PM, Grundy County_

 _Loop One Hundred Twenty-eight_

The speleologist group returned sans one member.

* * *

 _August 8, 3:30 PM, Grundy County_

 _Loop One Hundred Twenty-nine_

The speleologist group returned sans one member. No one seemed to know who Hana Ka'eleku was when Watson and Onyx asked around.

* * *

 _August 1, 2:15 PM, Peter Salt's house, Kitchen_

 _Loop One Hundred Thirty_

"Hana Ka'eleku?" Salt said with an unamused look, "who is that?"

"The geochemist," Watson said, "where is she?"

Go looked between Watson and Salt. "We don't have a geochemist on our team."

Watson opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Oh."

Onyx grabbed her hand. "Let's go, honey."

They stepped into the hallway. "Lavatob's gone," Watson said in wonderment.

"Is that good or bad?" Onyx said.

"Good- I think it's good. It means something _changed_ for once." She held Onyx's face in her hands, grinning. "She managed to get out of the reset loop we're in! Maybe- maybe-"

"Maybe I can too?" Onyx said breathlessly.

"Y-Yeah. Unless…"

The corner of Onyx's mouth twitched. "Unless it involves me time-travellin'…"

"I - I can't do that to you, Onyx. Or Tuck. I wouldn't wish this life on anyone. I just want an alternate timeline where you're safe and happy."

Onyx put her hands over Watson's. "Darlin', at this point I don't think I _can_ be happy without you. What do ya say?"

Watson smiled weakly. "Come on, Onyx. Once we get into an alternate timeline, I'll leave and you'll forget about me."

"Or you can stay."

"I can't. Too much potential for paradox."

"Cain't you do something about that?"

"No." Then she paused, finally dropping her hands. "Maybe."

Onyx's eyes lit up. "Maybe?"

"Maybe… if I had more resources…" she shook her head, "look, let's just see what we can do, first. And don't worry about forgetting about me, you can't be sad about something you don't remember."

"I ain't worried 'bout me being sad," Onyx said. "I'm worried about _you._ "

"I'll… I'll live. I know I will. I know my future self is out there, after all."

"Yeah?" Onyx narrowed her eyes. "Is she happy?"

"…"


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Alright folks, last chapter. Next two fics are gonna be by Sith (I hear he's nearly completed with one of them!) unless I actually manage to get off my butt and complete the 'Alois' murder investigation in the epsilon timeline' fic. Which is... not a priority for me right now but it isn't terribly important anyway.**

* * *

 _Time: ? Date: ? Place: ?_

Hana Lavatob coughed violently, then rolled over with a groan. She was soaking wet.

"Oh, good, you're still alive," came a nearby voice.

Hana blinked. Whoever it was here with her - wherever she was, it was dark but didn't seem to be Wonder Cave anymore - sounded like a man, and moreover sounded like that one Los Angeles prosecutor she'd seen on TV a handful of times.

"Sit up, Hana. We need to talk."

Hana did as the man said, searching him out in the dark. He was squatting in front of her. She couldn't see him very well - all she could really tell was that he was broad-shouldered and had somewhat long hair, and an eyepatch over his right eye. Even in the low light, Hana could tell it was red. His other eye seemed to give off a faint blue glow, not that it seemed to be blue in and of itself.

"Who are you?" she said.

"I'll answer that when we're done talking. You got all that water out of your lungs yet?"

Hana coughed again. "What… happened?"

"I pulled you out of the underground river and removed you from the timeline." His voice grew cold. "You shouldn't have even been there in the first place, you know."

Hana's lips pulled back from her teeth. "I just wanted to un-ruin my life, thank you," she said.

"It doesn't work like that," the man said with a shrug.

"Huh?"

"Well, for one thing you were just planning on preventing Onyx Alechi's death and then leaving. Even if you _could_ prevent Alechi's death, leaving would pretty much undo everything you worked for. The other speleologists wouldn't remember you."

"So I should have stayed," Hana said, "for the rest of my life."

"Yeah, however short that was. It would have made your changes stick. But-" and here he lifted up a finger, narrowing his eye, "that wouldn't a change a damn thing as far as you're concerned. It'd just stick you in a different timeline - where the Hana Lavatob who's _supposed_ to be there never gets poisoned and never has to go through randomly fainting or vomiting blood - but _you_ would still be exactly as you are now: severely damaged internal organs and a misplaced sense of how to fix things."

"Oh," Hana said. "So… I couldn't have changed things in my own… personal timeline."

"That'd cause a paradox."

She noticed that he didn't say _yes_ or _no_.

"I could have let this slide, though, as long as you surrendered your ability to time travel after coming back to the present and realizing you hadn't undone your own medical problems. It was selfish of you but it wouldn't have affected much and quite frankly, the Tula Group would have taken care of you anyway."

Hana swallowed hard.

"The problem was that Watson was also there."

"I noticed."

"Yeah. You _didn't_ notice that this was almost the 129th time you died."

"W-What?"

Whatever little light there was glimmered off of the man's teeth as he grinned humorlessly. "Watson managed to start up a little reset loop while she tried to fight the attractor field that is Alechi's death. The presence of an extra time-traveller was exacerbating it - part of reason _why_ it managed to rack up 129 resets before I could break in."

"So… what now?" Hana said, "what does it mean that I'm not in her reset loop anymore?"

"It means Watson will realize she can break out of it, and she's going to do so." He sighed. "You know, I would have preferred her just getting trapped in the same repeating week for the rest of her life, but no matter what I did it wouldn't end that way. She can't die while in the loop, and her getting out of it is inevitable. The least we can do is make sure she stops resetting time while she's at least a _little_ sane."

"I think you might be too late for that," Hana said, recalling the flat look in Watson's eyes when she'd last seen her.

"Yeah? I for one don't want to see just how crazy Omega Watson can _get_."

"Why didn't you grab her out of the loop instead of me? Not that I'm complaining…"

The man stood, smoothing his pants with his hands. "Do I look insane to you? No way I'm going to go directly up against Omega Watson - even if she isn't _quite_ her yet. Where Watson's personal timeline intersects with yours, she hasn't yet gone completely off the deep end - hasn't done the terrible things that she _will_ do as Omega Watson… but certainly by that point, the capacity is more than there."

"You're afraid of her," Hana said, raising an eyebrow. To be fair, she was too, but she'd actually done something to piss ωatson off. What had _this_ guy done?

" _She_ destroyed my entire home timeline," the man said icily, almost as if he had read Hana's mind.

Hana looked away deliberately. The man sighed, scratching his neck. Eventually, he said, "All those resets are weakening the timeline, anyway. After 130 runs, the alternate line that'll be spawned when Watson accomplishes her goal is going to be a hell of a thing - not to mention the fact that she completely reworked it to remove the biggest threats of paradox…"

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Anyway, you're involved now, like it or not." He reached behind his back, and rather belatedly Hana noticed that his belt didn't quite look like a normal belt. "I'm sorry about this. But you deserve it."

"H-Huh?" Hana said, trying to stand up but failing, and instead scrambling away as the eyepatched man pulled out a pistol, and pulled back the slide. "Wait! Who are you?!"

He pointed the gun at her. There wasn't any emotion in his eyes. "Macario Armando," he said, "and give my love to Maritza, will you?"

* * *

 _August 8, 11:40 PM, The barn_

"So," Watson said, looking up into the rafters where Onyx was sitting.

"So," Onyx echoed.

"Here we are again."

"Yup."

There was a long pause. Watson looked away just in time for Onyx to say, "Take us with you."

"I can't."

"Wat, please."

"I- can't. It's…"

"I don't care if the world you've made for yourself is dark an' dangerous. It's better'n this one."

Watson took a deep breath but didn't - couldn't - answer. Maybe Onyx was right in that the only way out of this was to drag her - and young Tuck, too - into the cutthroat world of time travel. But… it wasn't something Watson could just _do_. It would take resources to pull off, and the only way Watson could have access to those resources was to go even deeper into Hell.

Onyx climbed down from the rafters, stood in front of Watson. "We need to stop this, honey."

"I… I know."

"Every new time I see you it all comes rushin' back into my head - meetin' you a hundred times before, an' every time we messed up and I died…"

Watson closed her eyes. "Do you wish to forget?"

She opened her eyes again when she felt Onyx's lips on her own.

"No," Onyx said when she drew back, and Watson thought she could just see tears on her eyelashes in the moonlight, "I don't want to forget. I want to remember every second of my life with you, even if it feels like the last hundred times was dreams, even if it means rememberin' my own deaths… my own suicides…"

Watson grabbed her hands. "I don't know how much more of this I can take," she choked.

"I know, dear, I know."

"Please don't kill yourself. Please. Please."

"Even if I don't, I just gotta wait around for somethin' else to happen. It'll always be like that, as long as we're in this here time."

"I know," Watson whispered, resting her head against Onyx's shoulder, "I know. I don't know what to do."

"Do what ya have to do."

Watson didn't say anything for a long time.

"You _know_ what ya have to do," Onyx said in an undertone, right into her ear. "I know you know, and I know you've known for a real long time."

"I'm… afraid. I'm afraid you'll forget me."

"I won't." There wasn't any doubt in her voice.

Watson looked up at her, frustrated. "What makes you so sure?"

"'Cuz I love you," Onyx said. She pushed her away, gently. "Go do what ya need to do. I'll wait right here, and if'n ya don't come back… I'll-"

"Alright. Alright, I'll go." She pulled out the time travel device and, numbly, reset the coordinates. "I'll be right back, from your perspective anyway."

"Yeah?"

"D-Don't forget about me, Onyx."

Onyx kissed her on the nose. "I done told you, darlin', I won't."

"I love you."

"I love you too. Fix things for me, will ya? For us."

Watson nodded, her chest tight. The time door opened behind her, and they both blinked in the gentle orange and blue light. With one last long sad look at Onyx, Watson stepped through the door.

…

Onyx waited.

She waited and she thought. She thought about her and Wat, about everything they'd done together… about the way Wat adjusted to Southern culture, how well she got along with Tuck, afternoons spent fooling around in the creek. She thought about it all, and she thought hard, willing herself to not forget.

It almost felt like the edges of her memories were starting to get fuzzy.

She sat down on the floor of the barn and waited.

…

Somehow, the atmosphere changed.

Onyx looked up. Wat was standing in front of her - she jumped up quickly, whooping in joy, then- stopped. She was… different.

She didn't _look_ too different. Different clothes. Same Wat. She looked tired and malnourished. Somehow she looked older, but not in any concrete way - no lines on her face or softening of her body. It was her eyes; they looked like the eyes of an old woman, one who'd been through grief and pain and war and had lost something of herself somewhere along the way.

And they weren't the same pretty yellow-green color they were before. They were orange now, a stark, flat color.

"W… Wat?" Onyx said hesitantly.

Wat's blank face gradually broke into an exhausted smile. "Onyx…" she said in what almost sounded like a smoker's voice. "It's been _decades_."

It had been only a little over an hour for Onyx, but she didn't point that out as Wat threw her arms around her, pulling her close. She couldn't have even if she wanted to, as Wat kissed her hungrily.

Onyx pulled back, a million questions on her mind. "Did you-?"

"Yes," Wat said, "Salt's been dealt with. The little 'robbery' thing - it's not an issue anymore."

"Are you…"

"Going to stay?"

"Yeah."

Wat pressed her head under Onyx's chin, tucking herself away against her body like Onyx was her shelter from the world she'd created for herself. "Yes. Yes, I am."

"But… the paradoxes? Like yer eleven-year-old self in California?"

"Taken care of," Wat said in such a matter-of-fact tone of voice that a shiver ran down Onyx's spine. It would be best, she decided, to not think about it.

"I ain't gonna die this time?" Onyx asked instead.

"No, of course not," Wat said, pulling back, kissing her again, and her smile seemed _off_. "I got you away from that 'fixed event'. You're safe."

"Oh, honey… how…?"

"Welcome to the alpha omega timeline, Onyx. I made it just for you."

* * *

 _Time: ? Date: ? Location: Tennessee_

 _LN α ω_

Onyx passed Watson's spiky-haired grim secretary on the way in. They exchanged a silent nod, and she closed the door behind her.

"Onyx," Watson said, with a trace of warmth in her voice, as Onyx walked over to her.

"Hey, honey."

Watson stood. "Thanks for waiting while I dealt with Misty." She kissed her. "Mmm… is there something you want, or are you just popping in to visit me?"

"Something I want," Onyx smiled. Watson always did whatever she wanted - she'd (quite literally) reshape the Earth to suit Onyx's demands, and asked nothing in return except that Onyx love her. She didn't even mind when Onyx had a few flings on the side over the years. As long as it was Watson's bed she slept in at the end of the night…

Still, though, there was some part of Onyx that couldn't help but fear and maybe even hate what Watson had turned into. This wasn't the same Watson that she'd fallen in love with. Just the one who saved her.

"Anything," Watson said automatically. "What is it?"

"It's about Tuck's schoolin'. He says the other kids're makin' fun of him for his accent."

"Do you want me to find a different school for him, further south? Hmm… but that school offers the best geology course in the century, for students his age…"

Watson sat down, drawing Onyx onto her lap and nuzzling her. "Actually, I was thinkin'," Onyx said, "about sendin' him to study abroad. I mentioned it ta him an' he got real excited about it, plus them foreign kids won't care if he got a Southern drawl 'cuz all they gon' hear will just be 'American'."

"Does he have a preference to where?"

"Mexico. And he mentioned maybe goin' back to 1966 to do the first descent of the Sótano de las Golondrinas."

"Do you want to go with him?"

Onyx brushed a stray stand of Watson's hair back from her face. "Cain't we make it a family vacation, sugar? You've been workin' real hard lately. You could use a break."

"Ah… there have been some _developments_ lately. I don't know if I'll be able to relax."

Onyx's hands slipped down her shoulders. "Oh, I'm sure you will."

* * *

 _Time: ? Date: ? Location: Communications bunker_

 _LN ɸ α_

Macario leaned against the doorway, running a hand through his hair. He sighed. He looked up and saw Mailit, his co-conspirator, with his back to the doorway, sitting in a chair with his feet up on the desk in front of him. Even in the dimness of the bunker, Macario could see the faint blue light emanating from Mailit's eyes reflecting off the inside of his aviator sunglasses.

"Oh, Macario," Mailit said, turning around. "has Lavatob been…?"

"Yeah," Macario said. "She's gone."

"I thought so. You've got a bit of blood on your…" Mailit gestured towards his cheek. Macario pulled out a handkerchief and wiped it off.

"Poor Hana," Trucy murmured from the other side of the room, where she was fiddling with the controls panel. Next to her, Professor Josephson, her old mentor, nodded.

"She had just the kind of attitude that got lambda destroyed," Mailit said, turning back around, "using time travel for her own personal convenience…"

"Right. She deserved death," Macario said, putting his handkerchief back in his pocket after spending maybe a little longer than necessary staring at the splotch of blood on it, "but I gotta admit… I don't really like being the one to do it."

"Can't stomach it?" Trucy said.

" _Can_ , just fine. That's the problem. Never would have thought there'd come a day when I'd shoot someone in the forehead and not feel a thing."

"Well, the loop's finally closed, at least," Trucy said, checking the readings. "The alpha omega timeline is officially open for business."

"I almost feel bad for Onyx," Professor Josephson said.

"Kyl…" Mailit said, "going from the stereotypical simple country life to being the wife of Omega Watson…"

"Congrats to the happy couple," Macario said sarcastically, raising a cup of coffee in a toast.

"You know what they say," Trucy chimed in, "the pretty ones always marry psychos."

"I don't think anyone says that, Trucy," Professor Josephson said without looking up from the control panel.

"Whether anyone says it or not," Mailit said, "Onyx has damned herself. In more ways than I think she realizes…"

* * *

 **Kyl = shortening of the word "kyllä", or yes, in Finnish. Mailit is using it here as kind of an insincere 'yeah'**

 **Thanks for reading!**


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